


Welcome to the Jungle

by monobuu



Category: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon?, Don't think too hard about it, Flirting, Hand wavy science, Jumanji Crossover, M/M, Major Character Death is just in the video game, Not Canon Compliant, Violence, but they don't actually die, canon adjacent, mention: animal death (but not really), nothing makes sense, so they die, this is mostly crack, video game physics, what's canon?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:21:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24902986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monobuu/pseuds/monobuu
Summary: A GAME FOR THOSE WHO SEEK TO FINDA WAY TO LEAVE THEIR WORLD BEHIND
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark
Comments: 18
Kudos: 74





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is purely self-indulgent fuckery, heavily encouraged by my partner-in-crime hddnone.
> 
> Chapter 1: TSB Square A2 - Trapped/Isolated

“Greetings!”

If Bucky hadn’t been watching Tony like the creepy stalker Clint continuously called him, he’d probably have missed how Tony flinched slightly at the abrupt entrance of the world’s loudest Thunder God. He hid it well, but the noodles slipped from his chopsticks to fall back into their carton and the  _ look _ Tony threw Thor not a second later read:  _ Really. Again? We’ve talked about this, I have a heart condition. _

“Hey, Thor,” Steve said as Bucky very carefully hid his snort of amusement. “Haven’t seen you in months, what brings you back to Earth?”

“I come bearing gifts!” Thor boomed again. The guy had no concept of what an  _ inside voice _ was, no matter how often Bruce explained it to him.

Thor stepped further into the common room where everyone was gathered for their weekly family meal. They tried to eat together at least once a week, for ‘comradery,’ as Steve put it, even if one or two people couldn’t make it. Today they’d only been missing Bruce, who was off at some medical conference with Helen, and Thor, who up until a few moments ago had been in Asgard working with Valkyrie on some sort of political fallout.

Everyone was scattered about the room, on the couches or floor, eating from their various containers as they lounged in comfortable clothing. There hadn’t been an Avengers-level event in over a week.

“What kind of gifts?” Tony asked cautiously.

“An adventure!” Thor answered excitedly, brandishing something that looked awfully like the various boxes Clint had near the television in his room. “Though it resides within a virtual realm so as not to truly endanger my companions.”

“What?” Steve asked, confused.

“You brought a video game?” Clint translated, eyebrow quirked. “From Asgard? Does Asgard even have video games?”

“Clearly it does,” Sam said, gesturing with his fork. Bucky found it endlessly amusing when Sam attempted – and failed – to eat his food with chopsticks. Sam had figured it out and abandoned them promptly, much to Bucky’s disappointment.

“Where did you get an Asgardian video game?” Natasha asked.

“Twas a gift,” Thor said easily. “I imagined the Ruler of the Rainbow Road might enjoy questing through a new realm.”

“Me,” Clint said with a mouthful of rice and chicken. “He means me. I’m the Rainbow King.”

“As if,” Tony scoffed. “The only reason you won the last tournament was because you had a blue shell.”

“Yeah,” Clint said, tone implying Tony was stating the obvious. “Which I used with the accuracy of a sharp-shooter, I might add, truly worthy of my title of-”

“You can’t take credit for aim when the thing is a fucking  _ seeking _ turtle shell guaranteed to-” Tony interrupted.

“It’s not  _ just _ about who you hit, tin can, it’s about  _ when, _ and-”

“Enough,” Steve groaned. “We’ve heard this argument at least twenty times. And no one cares.”

Tony gave Steve a scandalized look, but before he could actually say anything, Sam offered a solution to the argument altogether.

“Maybe you can settle it with this new game, then. Whoever wins this game is the Rainbow King, or whatever.”

“Don’t act like you didn’t have a vested interest in that tournament, Wilson,” Tony responded with a smirk. “But sure, you’re on,” he continued, gaze going to Clint.

Bucky, who was sitting between Tony and Steve on the sofa, watched as Clint swallowed his current mouthful and met Tony’s grin with his own.

“Done,” Clint said, setting his carton of noodles aside so he could make grabby hands in Thor’s direction.

Bucky went back to his own food, watching idly as Clint and Tony fiddled with hooking the game up, connecting it to a power source and the TV itself. The actual game seemed to be a cartridge that stuck into the top of the system’s main box and Bucky heard Tony utter ‘ _ this is fucking ancient, what the hell?’ _ as he took it out, blew air into the bottom and then stuck it back in.

There were six controllers, four with wires coming out the backs that connected to the actual system and two without any wires at all. Bucky knew enough about modern games to know how they worked in concept, even if he didn’t know how they  _ actually  _ worked. So when Tony handed him one of the wired controllers, he took it without asking questions.

“How does a system this ancient even have wireless controllers?” Tony asked as he flipped said controller this way and that, inspecting it.

“Magic,” Natasha said, brushing her fingers over the buttons of the controller Clint had given her. Tony glared at her and Natasha smiled.

“You know I’m not good at these, Tony,” Steve complained, glancing between Bucky’s controller and his own, placing his hands exactly as Bucky had on both sides and then looking up at Tony.

“Six controllers means six players, Cap,” Tony said easily, waving away his concerns. “Only problem now is that we have seven people.”

Everyone currently present had controllers, except Thor and Sam. Tony held the last controller out between the two, eyebrow raised in question.

“Please,” Thor said, gesturing to Sam. “It is my gift, I would that the mighty Falcon enjoy the first round in my stead.”

Sam took the controller and nudged Clint with his elbow, eyebrows dancing. “Mighty Falcon about to whoop some Hawk ass.”

Clint shoved Sam playfully as they both took up seats on the floor. Clint reached over to turn on the system and Tony handled the remote, and within moments a menu was up on the screen.

“Jumanji,” Tony read, shrugging. “Never heard of it.”

“Looks like we get to choose our characters,” Clint said with excitement. “Oooh, who should I pick?”

“Probably doesn’t matter much,” Tony said, sitting back down next to Bucky. “If it’s an RPG style game, all the characters will have their uses.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Steve mumbled, and Bucky reached over and pressed the selection button for him, choosing whichever character Steve was currently on without even looking. It didn’t much matter which character Steve was, he’d play them badly no matter what. Same for Bucky himself, he wasn’t very good at most of these games, but he did enjoy playing them with Tony and Clint.

Once everyone had chosen their character, the screen morphed until it was just the title and a heavy, intense drum beat started through the speakers. Steve twitched nervously beside him and Bucky settled in, anticipating a night of haphazard fun as they all fumbled through a new game.

“Uh, guys?” Clint said, his tone ratcheted up a bit. Bucky turned and frowned as his gaze focused on Clint’s hand, which seemed to be… disintegrating.

“What is happening?” Sam joined in, holding up his own hand, which was also disappearing at a rapid rate, turning into some sort of dust and floating eerily towards the television screen.

“Thor who gave you this game?”

Bucky turned to Natasha, who had flung her controller to the floor and stood up from where she’d been snuggled into the recliner. She was disappearing too, and although her face was a mask of control, her eyes had widened enough for Bucky to see the shock.

Bucky’s head whipped to the side to find Tony all but gone, the last bits of him turning to dust as he floated towards the television. Bucky dropped his controller and made a vain attempt at grabbing the pieces of him, only to find his own hands beginning to disintegrate as well.

“Thor!” Steve yelled, and Bucky had just enough time to look up and see the thunderous anger on Thor’s face as he muttered viciously-

And then he was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2: TSB R3 - Genderswap

Bucky came to a hot second before he landed, hurtling out of the sky with more speed than he could really comprehend in the moment before he hit the ground.

Correction: before he hit something  _ squishy _ .

He bounced, rolled with the motion on instinct – at least he  _ tried  _ to, there was something off, something dragging at him, he couldn’t figure it out – and managed to land on his ass a decent distance away. He struggled to normalize his breathing as he narrowed his eyes, took in his surroundings and discovered he recognized absolutely nothing. He was in a jungle, surrounded by trees and fauna the likes of which he had never personally encountered – he’d spent enough time in Wakanda throughout the years to know that this was not T’Challa’s country, and that was about the extent that he knew jungles.

The something that he’d landed on moaned and rolled over and- Bucky had landed on another person. How  _ that _ person hadn’t died when Bucky had hit him was an utter mystery – Bucky weighed 250  _ easy _ , what with the metal arm and the muscle. Another mystery? Who the person was, because Bucky didn’t recognize him either.

Bucky pushed himself up off the ground so that he was on his feet, ready to fight if this person was dangerous, and-  _ what the fuck was on his back? _ Something was weighing him down, hanging awkwardly from his shoulders and throwing off his balance. He steadied himself, tried to reach for whatever was strapped to him and abruptly noticed two things.

First of all, he was a lot closer to the ground than he was supposed to be when he stood at his full height – he hadn’t seen the world from this vantage point since he was 12. Second, and this was the slightly more concerning part, his left arm was flesh and bone.

And also black. Not black like his metal arm should be, sparkling with thin lines of gold after Shuri’s upgrade, but dark-skinned like Sam was. With three thick, black lines tattooed onto the inside of his wrist.

“What the hell is going on?” he said lowly, almost forgetting about the other person entirely because- that was not his voice.

Not his voice, not his arm, not his skin, not his  _ body. _

“Who are you?” the person asked, and Bucky watched as the man climbed laboriously to his feet. “What- Why am I-?” the man continued to mutter as he settled himself.

The man was older, maybe late 40s, early 50s, and round. Dressed like he was on safari, the man had on a wide-brimmed hat, a vest and an honest-to-god  _ bowtie  _ under his jacket. Rounded spectacles and high socks completed the look and Bucky decided the only way this person could be an actual threat was if he was also a master of disguise.

“Who are you?” Bucky asked in that voice that wasn’t his. He coughed, worked his throat and tried again. “Where are we?” Nope. Still wrong.

“My guess?” the man said, sighing heavily. “In that stupid Asgardian game. This. This is why I don’t play children’s’ games,” and the man settled in an odd stance, hip cocked to one side with his hand settling gently on the curve, back straight and just the slightest bit intimidating, or as intimidating as you could get from a portly old guy. If Bucky didn’t know any better, he’d say he was looking at-

“Oh, god,” he said, strained. “Nat?”

The man lifted his free hand and gestured, as if to say,  _ So it would seem.  _ She had the same black line tattoos on her wrist. His wrist. Her wrist?

“How- What- Why-” Bucky tried valiantly, cocking his head as he took in his friend, who looked very much  _ not _ like the dangerous redhead he was familiar with.

“Speak for yourself, soldier,” the man- Natasha,  _ it was Natasha _ – said.

Bucky took inventory of himself. Apart from the skin tone and the flesh arm and the abysmal lack in height he seemed to be suffering from, it appeared he was also dressed for some sort of clichéd adventure, complete with a ridiculously large backpack. He wore hiking boots and tall socks that Tony would no doubt give him  _ hell  _ for wearing, along with cargo shorts, a camouflage vest and a-

He pulled at the red material around his neck. “Is this a kerchief?” he asked Natasha.

“And a really sexy floppy hat,” Natasha confirmed, the tone and cadence similar, even if the voice itself was completely different. “Sam is going to laugh his ass off.”

Bucky tugged on the brim of his floppy hat self-consciously. “What makes you think-”

As if on cue, someone began to scream from a great distance. It didn’t take long for both him and Natasha to orient on the sound, and altogether it took about two seconds for the newcomer to make it from sky to ground with a heavy, painful-sounding  _ thump. _

“I imagine we’re all here, somewhere,” Natasha said with a sigh, coming to stand beside him as they both watched the new person try to get up. “Any bets?”

The new person had actually managed not to faceplant on their landing, but they had stumbled a bit and ended up on their ass. It was a woman this time, with long, slightly curled red hair and legs for miles. And if Bucky and Natasha were dressed somewhat appropriately for a jungle adventure, this woman was dressed slightly… different.

Her shirt was skin tight and extended only to about mid-rib, covered by some sort of leather harness that didn’t actually hold anything, just framed her assets. Her shorts were much too short to be appropriate for anything other than a day at the beach. The only logical piece of clothing she wore were high boots that protected the bottom half of her legs.

“Steve,” Bucky murmured, only because he’d really get a kick out of it if Steve was suddenly put into the body of a ridiculously attractive woman. With a body like that, Steve wouldn’t know where to put his hands, where to look, or how to even function without worrying he’d offend someone.

“Sam,” Natasha said, and Bucky figured hilarity played an important part of her guess as well.

The woman stood up, found her balance and then eyed him and Natasha suspiciously before she seemed to notice something was off about her. She looked down at herself, hands running down her sides and stomach, stuck her leg out to admire it with a slow smile, then turned to look down at her ass as much as she was able. She turned back around, brought her hands up abruptly to cup her breasts and when her head came up, there was an outright grin on her face.

Bucky and Natasha sighed at the same time. They’d both been wrong, it seemed.

“I don’t know who you fuckers are or where I am or what  _ happened, _ ” she said gleefully. “But I am down for whatever!”

“Clint,” Natasha said shortly. “Shut up.”

“Nat!?” Clint said, eyes wide, then pivoted to point at Bucky. “Who’s shorty?”

Bucky crossed his arms, tried his Resting Bitch Face and found that this particular face didn’t do it quite so well when Clint just laughed at him. “Oh god, is that Bucky? This is great.”

Before Bucky could physically threaten Clint – and wasn’t that weird? He simultaneously wanted to punch the archer in the face and yet,  _ couldn’t _ , because it was the face of a total stranger who hadn’t actually wronged him in any way, yet – when two more people fell from the sky.

The smaller man landed poorly, tumbling to the ground and almost rolling right into Clint where he stood grinning at Bucky and Natasha. Clint jumped out of the way in time, joining the first two as they watched the second man, quite a bit bigger, land dramatically on his feet, crouched in what Bucky had dubbed the ‘Super Hero Landing Pose.’

As the smaller one picked himself up and dusted himself off, the taller man straightened, giving his surroundings a stern eye before turning to them. His expression was supremely unimpressed, but Bucky had trouble focusing on that with all the  _ muscle _ the guy had on him. Completely bald, the man was dressed in an appropriately dirtied button up shirt, tucked into cargo pants and a complicated belt and holster combo that held an entire array of knives. He wore fingerless leather gloves that looked well-used and his stance said, very clearly,  _ do not fuck with me. _

“Steve,” they all whispered at the same time, because how could it be anyone else?

“What the fuck,” Bucky complained. “I shrink twelve inches and he gets to be Mr. Beefcake?”

“Snowflake, is that you?” the man said, and his serious expression suddenly turned terribly amused. “And let me guess, the portly gentleman beside you is none other than Itsy Bitsy, I’d know that hip-tilt anywhere. Who’s the hot chick with the legs? Please tell me it’s Steve, he is going to be so embarrassed about all that skin.”

“Oh!” Clint said, clearly happy at the new development. “Mr. Beefcake is Stark!”

Natasha, completely against character, let out a little snort. Bucky, meanwhile, was too busy ogling Tony as Tony ogled himself.

“Holy shit,” Tony said, twisting this way and that. “Is this how you feel all the time, Robo-cop? I’ve never had muscles this big in my entire life. Look at this!” and he was poking his bicep with a finger, utterly delighted. He pulled the collar of his shirt away from his body and peaked down at his chest, which, given the way he was straining his shirt, probably looked something like what Bucky’s and Steve’s would in the real world. Tony raised his eyes and met Bucky’s before pumping his eyebrows suggestively.

“Niiice,” Tony said lowly.

“Tony, be serious,” Natasha said.

“I am,” Tony answered, turning her way and letting his shirt fall back to his chest. He put his hands on his hips and- was he?

Was he doing the pose that Steve always did during press conferences?

“So who’s the chick and who’s the handsome devil to her left?” Tony asked.

They all turned to the first man who’d fallen, now on his feet and looking not particularly happy. He was dressed much the same as everyone else – save Clint – with the addition of a bomber jacket.

Clint raised his hand – her hand? This was going to get weird, fast. “I’m Clint!” he said.

Natasha did the same, lifting a hand at the newcomer. “Natasha.”

“Bucky,” Bucky said, hands on his hips and trying his absolute best to get this face to look serious and stern.

“Tony,” Tony said brightly, which was so weird, coming from the mouth of someone who towered over him with muscles and good looks. Tony’s character was clearly meant to scowl at anything that moved and Tony’s own cocksure, charming expressions looked eery because of it.

“This is the game,” the new guy said, unimpressed. “We’re in the goddamn game. And they whitewashed me. They turned me into some Nick Jonas-lookin’ asshole. Perfect.”

“Ah,” Clint said, turning to the rest of them with a knowing look. “Wilson.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. If this was Sam, that meant Steve was the only one missing, and as if on cue, one final person fell from the sky.

One tiny, Asian, female person.

She stood up, looked around warily at the gathered people and opened her mouth.

“What’s going on?”

And Bucky lost it. His laughter sputtered out of him in snorts and poorly-contained giggles and Clint was right there with him as he doubled over. You could hear the effort behind the voice, trying in earnest to be that classic _Captain America Means Business_ _So Give Me Answers, Now_ command, but what actually came out was the perky voice of a twenty-something young woman. Pair that with the fact that Steve was, once again, 300 pounds of pent-up aggression in a five foot tall package and Bucky could not deal at all with the absurdity.

“Why do I- What is- Why-” Steve tried, and Tony began laughing too, with Sam snorting into his hand surreptitiously.

“Boys!” Natasha called out firmly. “Enough.”

They quieted rather quickly, but Steve’s look of confused anger almost set Bucky off again, to be completely honest.

“Steve,” Natasha said. “We are in the video game, as the avatars-”

“The what?” Steve asked.

“The characters you play as, in a video game,” Tony explained. “Seems Asgard has a different interpretation of virtual reality. It’s me, Tony.”

Steve gave Tony a skeptical look. “The hell you are.”

“No, really, that’s Tony,” Clint said. “I’m Clint.” And then he went through the rest of their party, ending with Bucky. Bucky gave Steve a look that  _ dared _ him to fucking say anything about his height and either Bucky still managed to look menacing enough to appropriately scare Steve into silence, or Steve was doing that annoyingly heroic thing where he actually focused on the problem at hand. It’s honestly what made him such a bore on comms.

“How do we get out of this?” Steve asked.

“Hopefully Thor is working on that as we speak,” Natasha murmured. “I’m sure this has something to do with Asgardian magic.”

“Ugh, magic,” Tony muttered loudly.

“And until then?” Steve demanded, glaring at Tony.

“Let’s play the game!” Clint cried, fist pumping.

“How about no,” Sam argued. “Let’s just wait here and see if Thor can magic us out of it. Seems like we’re in a pretty neutral location – whatever the game’s premise, if we don’t actually start anything, we should be fine.”

“Normally, I’d agree with you, Wilson,” Tony said.

“But?” Sam sighed.

“But,” Tony said, grinning. “I think we’re gonna need to get a move on, pronto.”

“Because?” Natasha prompted.

“Because that,” Tony said, pointing.

Bucky looked where Tony was indicating and for a moment, didn’t see anything. Then a giant animal came lumbering out of the heavy foliage, face broad and round, with tiny ears on top that flicked as it stopped in front of them. Bucky took a step back from where it had come through the jungle, as did Natasha and Tony.

“That is a hippo,” Sam asked.

“Aaaaw,” Clint cooed, stepping closer, and Natasha raised a hand as if to stop him.

“Clint, hippopotamuses are dangerous-” Bucky started.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t-” Tony began.

“He’s so cute,” Clint said, reaching out a hand and patting the beast twice on the nose.

Bucky held his breath for a long moment, braced for what, exactly, he didn’t know. A giant roar from the hippo, imminent violence, lasers to come shooting out of his eyes – Bucky didn’t really have a good grasp of modern video games.

Clint turned around, flapping a hand at Tony. “See? Completely harmless.”

Tony raised an impressively muscled eyebrow (could eyebrows even  _ be _ muscled?) and Bucky let out his breath tentatively.

And that’s when the hippo ate Clint.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TSB Square R2 - Edwin Jarvis

One moment, Clint was there in all his short-shorts glory, happily grinning as he basked in their disbelief, and the next moment he was gone.

The hippo lunged up, opened his wide, gaping mouth and just swallowed him whole.

Snap, gulp,  _ gone. _

“Holy shit!” Sam shouted, jumping back.

“Run!” Tony yelled, using his massive arms to lead them into immediate motion.

“Go, go, go!” Steve added hastily.

Bucky didn’t need to be told twice, he turned on his heel and took off in the opposite direction. He heard the hippo roar behind them as all five of them crashed through the trees and the bushes, jumped over branches and roots and other fauna, only to tumble out into an open grassy area. They continued to run, and while the various jungle detritus had slowed everyone down to about the same pace, now that they were out in the open, Bucky began to notice that certain people were running much faster than others.

More specifically,  _ everyone _ was running faster than  _ him. _

“What the fuck,” he huffed. “Why can’t I run!?”

Even Natasha was ahead of him, and her character was clearly not built for speed. Tony was in the lead, because clearly his character was not only the most handsome, but also the most talented, and when Tony glanced behind him and spotted Bucky lagging, he slowed to a halt, eyes flitting from Bucky to the tree line they’d left behind as everyone else caught up to him one by one. When Bucky finally made it, huffing and puffing like he’d never run before in his entire life, Tony grinned at him.

“Nice of you to join us,” Tony said.

Bucky, bent over with his hands on his knees as he heaved for breath, held up a single hand with a single finger extended in Tony’s dumb, handsome direction. There was suddenly a loud, short ringing sound, like a computerized bell being rung, and they all looked up as Clint came hurtling out of the sky. He landed badly, again, but stood up rather abruptly, seemingly no worse for wear after being eaten by the local wildlife.

“He ate me,” Clint said, eyes wide. “That fat rhino ate me.”

“Holy shit,” Sam said again.

Bucky glanced at Clint’s arm as Clint ran his hands through long hair, a sneaking suspicion growing in the back of his mind. He’d played enough video games with Clint to know that you didn’t just die and get to come back indefinitely – not even the short Italian plumber got away with that. Sure enough, Clint flung out his hand wildly to gesture back towards the hippo and the three lines that mimicked Bucky’s own had changed to two.

“Clint,” Bucky said, holding up his own wrist and pointing to the tattoos.

Clint glanced over, looked at his own wrist and deflated. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

“So!” Tony chirped, investigating his own tattoos. “We have lives, we can lose them, and staying put is not an option.”

“What happens if we lose all three?” Steve asked.

“Game over, generally,” Clint offered, still looking at his wrist.

“I don’t like our odds, pal,” Bucky told Steve. “We should probably try not to die.”

“I think the more important question is,” Sam said. “Why does Barnes run slow as shit?”

Bucky whipped around to glare at him and Sam just shrugged.

“I will kill you,” Bucky told him.

“I’d like to see you and your floppy hat try,” Sam shot back with a grin.

“Yeah?” Bucky asked, then wound up and threw his left arm at Sam’s face. Sam managed to dodge enough that he didn’t get a left hook to the cheekbone, but Bucky managed to catch him in his chest, right in the pec, and before Bucky could wind up to try again, something  _ ping _ ’ed and a large, neon colored box appeared out of nowhere above Sam’s head.

“The fuck?” Sam spat, trying to get away from the hovering box, but it followed him wherever he moved.

“Hold up,” Clint said. “I think this is-”

“Ooh, information!” Tony said, joining Clint. “Stop moving, Wilson.”

“Seaplane McDonough,” Clint read. “Nice name, dude.” 

Sam flipped him off.

“Class: pilot,” Tony said. “Strengths: piloting, of course, that would be a given. And how appropriate that our resident pilot gets to be the pilot character? What else- Making margaritas? Clearly a man after my own heart.”

Bucky threw Sam a glare for no reason at all other than that Sam was generally a frustrating person. 

“Weakness: mosquito bites,” Clint finished.

Sam glanced up, frowned. “Are you kidding me with this? We are in the  _ jungle _ and they make a character allergic to mosquitos? What am I supposed to do, carry around citronella candles?”

“How’d you get that box?” Bucky asked, wondering how he could get his own to pop up.

Sam punched him. In the chest. Hard.

“Fuck- Ow!” Bucky yelled, ignoring that his own box had, indeed, popped up. “I’m little! You can’t just punch me!”

“Franklin Finbar,” Tony read, cutting them off. “Zoologist. Strengths: zoology- again, obviously. Weapons valet, linguistics. Weaknesses: speed, strength… And cake.”

Bucky held up a finger, first in Clint’s face, then in Tony’s. “Do not.”

“How is  _ strength _ a weakness?” Tony asked with a shit-eating grin.

“So that’s why you run slower than molasses in January,” Sam crowed. 

“Cake-” Clint started, lips pressed together tightly in a suppressed fit of giggles.

“No,” Bucky said again, “Nope.” And he punched Clint in the chest, right where Sam had hit him. Clint’s own box popped open.

“Would you please stop punching each other?” Natasha said, tapping her own chest.

Everyone turned to Clint’s box first. 

Ruby Roundhouse: Commando   
Strengths: Karate, tai’chi, aikido, dance fighting   
Weakness: Venom

“Sweet!” Clint cheered, “I am a 100% kickass lady boss. Dance fighting!? This is the best thing that’s ever happened.”

Next, Natasha’s box. 

Shelly Oberon: Renowned cartographer, cryptographer   
Strengths: Cartography, archaeology, paleontology   
Weakness: Endurance

Natasha sighed and Bucky technically knew what each of Natasha’s strengths were, he just didn’t know how they’d be useful in a jungle adventure. There was another ping and Bucky turned to find Tony had opened his box as well.

Smolder Bravestone: Adventurer, explorer, archeologist   
Strengths: Fearless, strength, speed, climbing, boomerang, smoldering intensity

“Where’s your weaknesses?” Bucky asked, frowning.

Tony gave him a wink. “Don’t have any,” he said.

“What the fuck is ‘smoldering intensity’?” Clint asked.

“It’s that dumb thing he does with his face,” Sam answered, tapping his chest again so that his box disappeared. “It’s like Barnes’ normal Resting Bitch Face or Cap’s Look Of Disapproval.”

Bucky rolled his eyes, looking to Steve, who was turned the other way and gently poking at his chest. “How do you-” he was muttering, and then, “Ah!” when he finally managed to pop it open.

The rest of their group put their boxes away and huddled around Steve’s.

Ming Fleetfoot: cat burglar   
Strengths: Pickpocket, safe-cracker   
Weakness: Pollen

“Ooh!” Clint said with feeling, wincing exaggeratedly even as Steve sent him the aforementioned Look Of Disapproval, somewhat less effective on his current face, but the effort was there. That’s what mattered. 

“Looks like you’re back to having asthma, Stevie,” Bucky said with a chuckle. “Pollen’s a bitch.”

Steve glared at him too, then tapped his chest once, twice, another time, before finally getting his box to disappear. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he muttered.

“Well, now what?” Sam asked. “We’re obviously being made to play the game, but how do we know what we’re supposed to do next?”

“Other than not getting eaten by those vicious water cows,” Clint added.

“Hippopotamus,” Bucky corrected on instinct. Not  _ his _ instincts, which lay more towards violence and snark, but Franklin Finbar’s instincts. It was like he couldn’t turn it off. Clint gave him a look but before he could whine too badly about it, a jeep skidded to a halt just beside them, coming out of literally nowhere.

The driver poked his head out the window with a grin.

“Ah, Dr. Bravestone!” he called in a very cultured British voice that did not sound terribly unlike a certain AI back in the real world. “Welcome to Jumanji!”

“Jarvis?” Tony asked with a cautious amount of hope. “Is that you, buddy?” 

“Don’t just stand there,” the driver - Jarvis until otherwise noted - said. “Hop in!”

With little else to go on and the knowledge that whatever Asgardian magic was running this show wanted them to actually play the game, they all did what Jarvis asked, piling into the jeep that, unlike actual jeeps, could fit seven people. Who knew.

“Dr. Bravestone,” Jarvis continued enthusiastically as they began to move swiftly down the road and further into the jungle. “Famed archaeologist and international explorer. Known across the seven continents for your courageous exploits.”

Natasha, who had claimed shotgun by way of being Natasha, gave Jarvis a weird look.

“I can’t tell you what an honor it is to finally meet you,” Jarvis said sincerely.

“This can’t possibly be Jarvis,” Sam said.

“And I’m not embarrassed to say you’re even more dashing in person!” Probably Not Jarvis continued.

“Definitely not Jarvis,” Clint muttered from the backseat.

“Hush,” Tony said, preening at the compliments. 

“Who are you?” Steve asked from behind them.

“Nigel Billingsly at your service,” Jarvis - er, Nigel replied promptly. “Ming Fleetfoot, I’ve been so anxious for your arrival. As you know, Jumanji is in grave danger. We’re counting on the six of you to lift the curse.”

“Curse?” Steve asked.

“What curse?” Sam added.

“Seaplane McDonough,” Nigel said, addressing Sam. “Nigel Billingsly at your service. I’ve been so anxious for your arrival.”

“Why does he keep repeating himself?” Bucky murmured, frowning at Tony, who was also giving Nigel a contemplative look.

“I think he’s an NPC,” Clint said from the back. “Non-player character,” he explained to Steve, who was sitting between him and Sam and looking just as confused as he had been when they’d discovered they were avatars in a game.

“He’s part of the game,” Tony said, working through it as he spoke. “Even if Jarvis managed to follow us into the game, if he got shunted into an NPC, he’ll only be able to give us a programmed series of responses.”

“This is so fucked up,” Bucky said. “So he can’t help us?”

“I’m at your service, Franklin ‘Mouse’ Finbar!” Nigel insisted.

“Mouse?” Bucky asked. Had that been in his little information box?

“Of course,” Nigel said cheerfully. “A nickname given for your diminutive stature and adorable manner. I knew you’d be here. Dr. Bravestone doesn’t go anywhere without his trusty sidekick.”

“Sidekick?” Bucky echoed.

“Ever since Dr. Bravestone rescued you from the clutches of a warlord in the jungles of Peru, you’ve never left his side.”

Bucky looked over to find Tony sitting beside him, grinning. “You’re welcome,” Tony said. “Sidekick.”

Clint cackled behind them and when Bucky whipped around to smack him he found both Sam and Steve snickering at him as well. He raised an eyebrow at Steve.

“Good thing I don’t have a complex about being  _ tiny _ and  _ ineffective _ ,” Bucky said easily. “Or this would be really awkward.”

Silence reigned as Steve stewed where he sat between Clint and Sam, and Bucky turned back around triumphantly. Natasha was turned around in her seat, glaring at them all.

“Can we get back to the curse, please?” she asked pointedly.

“It’s all documented in the letter I sent Dr. Bravestone,” Nigel explained. “Perhaps you should read it outloud.”

“Letter?” Tony asked, patting himself down as if he had lost it on his person. Bucky noticed a piece of paper suddenly poking out of Tony’s shirt and snatched it, opening it up as Tony looked on curiously.

“Dr. Bravestone,” Bucky read, “I am writing to you regarding the desperate situation in Jumanji. We need your help at once.”

As soon as Bucky got to the end of the second sentence, the air around them blurred and coalesced into some sort of vision.

“What’s happening?!” Steve shouted.

“Relax,” Clint said easily. “It’s a cut scene.”

The vision sped off into the depths of the jungle surrounding them, landing on what looked to be a group of seven people huddled together beneath the trees. Six of them held a glowing stone, each a different color, and they whispered amongst themselves as Nigel’s voice sounded all around them.

“The land of Jumanji is home to the Infinity Stones, six gems that maintain balance throughout the jungle.”

Here the vision changed, the six stones floating up into the darkness of the night time sky, only to settle into a large rock formation, hidden beneath vines and fauna as to be almost impossible to see, save for how they glowed. 

“For millions of years, these stones sat nestled in Mount Guanto, protected by the land and people, who knew their presence was the only thing keeping Jumanji from plunging into unending darkness.”

The vision went abruptly dark, the stones’ lights blinking out entirely.

“A bit dramatic,” Clint said, as if judging the game’s backstory. Bucky rolled his eyes, confident that no one could see him. 

The vision cleared, changing to show Nigel himself guiding a large group of men through the jungle. The man beside Nigel was huge, tall and broad like Steve and Bucky were in the real world, and with a menacing look about him. His face was heavily scarred and seemed set in a permanent scowl, even when he smiled, and he followed Nigel closely as they made their way through the jungle.

“I was hired by Thanos Von Titan,” Nigel’s voice continued. “Who wished to see the stones in all their glory and had dedicated his life to discovering everything he could about them. Little did I know that he intended to steal them for his very own and use them for nefarious purposes I could only begin to imagine.”

“Dun, dun, dun,” Clint whispered, but Natasha shushed him and even as the vision closed in on Von Titan’s face and the cruel glint in his eyes, Bucky could hear Sam smack Clint upside the head.

“I decided this could not happen,” Nigel picked up again. “And so under the cover of nightfall, I snuck ahead, ran to where the stones were hidden and took them myself. I gave a stone to each of my trusted crew, and scattered them in all directions with instructions to hide the stones from Von Titan. Time, Space, Mind, Reality, Power, and Soul.”

The vision returned to the scene it had started on, but now they could see that one of the seven people was Nigel himself, giving over the stone to his six trusted crew members. In turn, they each took a stone, and then all at once they scattered into the jungle, leaving only Nigel there in the dark. 

It zoomed back to where Nigel had left his employer, Von Titan, in the camp. The man had awoken, discovered Nigel’s absence, and looked just as menacing as any stereotypical video game villain ought to when he called his equally hideous underlings to his side and told them, “Find me those stones. And slaughter anyone who tries to stop you.”

The vision snapped back, away from them, and they were once again in the jeep with Nigel and the rest of their party.

“Right then!” Nigel said happily, screeching the vehicle to a stop at the top of a hill. “With the invaluable help of your associates, you must use your complementary skills to find the Infinity Stones and return them to Mount Guanto, and lift the curse.”

“Uhh,” Sam muttered.

“Good luck!” Nigel said, and pressed a button that opened all of the vehicle’s doors at once. “The fate of Jumanji is in your hands!”

“Great,” Bucky said.

“And remember,” Nigel said. “The goal for you I’ll recite in verse. Return the stones, and lift the curse. If you wish to leave the game, you must save Jumanji and call out it’s name.”

They all sat there in silence, waiting. After a few moments, Nigel spoke again. “Good luck! The fate of Jumanji is in your hands! And remember, the goal for you I’ll recite in verse. Return the stones…”

“Aw man, he’s stuck on repeat again,” Sam said, tumbling out of the jeep. Bucky followed, exiting out his own side and turning to find Natasha already out and looking around the space they’d been dropped off. It was an open space, a field of sorts, with the heavily wooded jungle off in the distance. 

“Dr. Bravestone!” Nigel called, and Bucky watched as Tony turned. “Here is a map that shall aid you. Good luck!”

Tony took the map from Nigel’s hand and the man gave a salute before driving off, leaving them there with only each other for company. Bucky walked over to Tony, peaking over his massive bicep, on  _ tiptoes _ , to see the map as he unfolded it.

It was blank.

“It’s blank,” Tony said helpfully.

Great. Now what?


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony Stark Bingo square R4 - Sober  
> StarkBucks Bingo square I5 - BAMF Tony

“The map is what?” Sam asked.

“Blank,” Tony said again, scowling at the empty piece of paper.

“Why would he give us a blank map?” Steve asked, coming up to Tony’s other side. Instead of standing on  _ his _ tiptoes, Steve just yanked Tony’s arm down so that he could see it from his level. Tony didn’t so much as budge, and Steve yanked harder, almost swinging off Tony’s arm in an effort to get him to move it lower.

Bucky smirked. Steve was even shorter than Bucky like this, and Tony was not above rubbing it in. 

“Tony,” Steve grumbled. “Let me see the map.”

“What’s the magic word, Cap?” Tony asked, if anything holding the map slightly higher.

“Punk!” Clint suggested helpfully. “Right, Cap? That’s your favorite word.”

“No,” Natasha said, gliding over smoothly to Bucky’s side even with the added weight of her character. “That’s what he calls Bucky. What do you call Tony, Steve?”

“Yeah, Steve,” Tony said, turning to Steve and lowering the map so he could grin at the tiny woman that Steve currently was. “What do you call me?”

“Ass-”

“The map isn’t blank, Tony,” Natasha interrupted suddenly, taking the map easily from Tony’s hands. Tony let her, frowning. “It has the clearing we started in, Jarvis’ path and where we’re standing now.”

Clint perked up as Natasha studied the paper. “Oh!” he said, pointing at her. Bucky raised an eyebrow. “The thing! The- her strengths, one of them was choreography.”

“Cartography,” Sam murmured.

“S’what I said,” Clint said. “Means she can read the map, when we can’t.”

“Work together,” Steve said quietly, then heaved a sigh. “Alright, Nat. Where do we go next?”

Nat looked up, oriented herself and turned. Looked up again, pointed down the hill they were currently on and towards the jungle and the small stream of smoke that was coming from what looked like a clearing a few miles in. 

“That way,” she said confidently.

“Okay, let’s get moving then,” Steve said, hustling everybody in that direction.

“Hey, Buck!” Sam called from the far side of Steve. “You want us to give you a headstart?”

“Laugh it up, Mosquito Boy,” Bucky growled. 

Natasha just shook her head, but Tony let out a chuckle along with Clint as he bounced along. Bucky was pretty sure the entire reason he was skipping was to get his chest to bounce.

“You guys hear that?” Tony asked when they were only a couple yards down the hill.

“Hear what?” Steve asked, turning to look around them. “I don’t hear anything.”

Which was probably just as unsettling to Steve as it was for Bucky, considering their enhanced senses in the real world. Bucky’s character couldn’t hear shit, and Steve’s apparently wasn’t much better.

“It’s a sort of,” Tony hedged, tilting his head. “Like a, hmm, almost like a buzzing? Rumbling? Roaring? Like a bunch of engines, maybe. Yeah, definitely engines.”

“I hear it,” Sam said, stopping all of a sudden. He looked directly back at where Tony was walking near Bucky.

“Motorcycle engines,” Clint agreed, turning as well, and since everyone else was doing it, Bucky turned with them, eyeing the top of the hill.

Almost as soon as Bucky’s hearing managed to pick it up, a lone motorcycle came hurtling over the top of the hill and skidded to an impressive stop, kicking dirt and plant life up as the rider swung the back tire around. He revved the engine menacingly.

“That can’t be good,” Clint said.

“Definitely bad guys,” Tony agreed.

“We should run,” Sam suggested, and abruptly curled his arm under Steve and hauled him up into a bridal carry before he took off in the direction they’d been headed, at a much faster pace.

“Tony!” Natasha called, tugging on Clint’s arm to get him moving as well.

“Yep,” Tony said loudly. “On it!”

“On wha-” Bucky started to say, but was silenced altogether when Tony picked him up and slung him over his shoulder, his massive arm wrapped around Bucky’s thighs where they hung at Tony’s chest. “For the love of-!”

“Can it, Snowflake!” Tony huffed as he began to run. Bucky was bouncing horribly until he managed to get a grip on Tony’s belt and steady himself, and then he realized where his hands were and his eyes zeroed in on what lay beneath it.

Dr. Bravestone’s ass wasn’t  _ quite _ as nice as Tony’s actual one, but Bucky certainly wasn’t going to complain about the view.

The engines roared, and Bucky whipped his head up to watch as dozens more bikes joined the first as they sped down the hill after them. They had something mounted on the handlebars, right in the middle, and- 

Rocket launchers. They had actual rocket launchers mounted to their bikes.

“Tony,” Bucky yelled over the commotion. “Run faster!”

“Workin on it,” Tony grunted as they flew by the others. Speed was obviously not realistic in this game, but Bucky watched as the riders quickly began closing the distance. They began using the rockets and explosions erupted around the group, sending dirt and debri flying everywhere.

Bucky pushed himself up a bit more, turned to gauge where the tree line of the jungle was, then glanced back toward the riders.

“Quit squirming,” Tony complained, but Bucky ignored him. Another explosion hit the ground just shy of their slowest - since Bucky was being fucking carried - member.

“Nat!” he yelled. “Pick up the pace!”

Tony crashed through the first line of trees and Bucky almost lost sight of everyone as the foliage enclosed them and they headed down into a dip, across a small stream and further into the jungle. Tony kept running, but Bucky could feel his head turning against Bucky’s side, scanning the area even as he kept up his lightning speed. Bucky could just make out the others coming through the trees, and counted to make sure everyone had made it.

Tony stopped abruptly, tugged Bucky off his shoulder and into the same bridal carry that Sam had used on Steve. “Get ready,” Tony said quickly, and before Bucky could ask what the hell he was doing, Tony  _ threw him. _

Threw him up and into a goddamn tree. Bucky scrambled in the air, turning toward the branch Tony had clearly aimed for and wrapping his arms around it as best he could. His backpack made him swing wildly for a frightening second before Bucky stabilized himself, and when he managed to pull himself up in order to sit, Tony had disappeared.

“What the- Tony!” Bucky yelled in frustration. “What the fuck am I supposed to do up here?” he muttered to himself.

Clint crashed through the trees below him and Bucky straightened, watching as Clint dodged another explosion, ran up a downed log or branch of some sort and then did a flip mid-air before landing and taking off again.

“Fucking ridiculous,” Bucky grumbled.

Natasha came next, slower than the others. Sam and Steve must’ve scattered in a different direction because Bucky couldn’t see them. The bikers came roaring in moments later, three of them, and one aimed for Natasha directly as she skidded to a halt and turned to face them.

Natasha wasn’t an idiot. She wasn’t going to be able to just run away, she’d have to take her chances with fighting - a skillset that hadn’t been listed for her character. It hadn’t been listed for Bucky’s either, but Natasha had stopped right below Bucky’s branch, and physics was a thing.

Possibly not as much of a thing in this game as it was in the real world, but Bucky wasn’t spoiled for choices at the moment.

Bucky shrugged off his backpack, heavier than it probably should be, and gripped the branch hard with his right hand. His left held the backpack, and while it wasn’t the metal powerhouse that it usually was, the weight of the pack and gravity should do most of the work for him.

Just as the bike was about to take Natasha down, Bucky swung, Natasha dove to the left, and the backpack swung right into the face of the rider, dislodging him violently from his bike. Bucky lost his grip on the pack and let it go, swinging down with as much grace as his character’s abilities allowed for, and found his feet.

Natasha, after her dive, had scrambled for Bucky’s pack and was digging through it. She pulled out what looked like two pistols and held them up, took aim, and pulled the triggers as the riders bore down on them, firing their own weapons.

Either her aim was off due to her character’s lack of skill or the game was making her miss, because she didn’t hit either of the remaining riders even once. Enough bullets pinged off their bikes that they had to dodge wide of where they stood, to circle around again, but they didn’t look any worse for wear because of the barrage, which was completely unfair. 

“Dammit,” she hissed, and turned her face toward where Bucky was crouched beside her. He could see the pain in her eyes, even if they weren’t  _ Natasha’s _ eyes, and his gaze went immediately to where she was holding her stomach. A blood stain was slowly getting bigger beneath her hand and Bucky snapped his eyes back up, searching her face.

“How bad is it,” he asked quickly, keeping his ears tuned into the riders as they circled.

Bad enough, apparently, because in the next moment, Natasha was gone. 

“Fuck,” Bucky swore, and turned to face the riders, who were still waiting, revving their engines at him threateningly, the sound almost overwhelming in that he was literally out of options. The rider to Bucky’s left leaned forward, twisted the gas and his back wheel skidded through the dirt before it gained purchase, lurching him forward and directly at where Bucky was still crouched, right next to his useless backpack full of weapons he wouldn’t be able to use, if Natasha’s fatal attempt was anything to go by. 

The best he could hope for was to dodge this rider, keep an eye on the other one, and maybe by then Natasha would be back with a better idea.

Before the rider even got close to Bucky, the  _ ping _ of a returning player sounded out and Natasha came hurtling down from the sky.

To land directly on the rider barreling down on Bucky. The rider tumbled off, the bike skittered to the ground, and as Natasha tried to orient herself and gain her feet, Bucky lunged up and toward the downed rider. He threw a punch directly at the man’s temple and it didn’t matter that none of his attributes came even close to hand-to-hand, a sucker punch from any grown man could take someone out if you knew where to land it.

And Bucky did.

He looked up at Natasha as the last rider revved his engine some more.

“That worked,” Natasha said, turning so that she could face the last rider beside Bucky. “But I can’t just die every time we need to take out an enemy and hope that I fall on top of them when I respawn.” 

“Agreed,” Bucky said, eyeing the rider as he took almost the exact same motions as the previous rider, his wheels kicking dirt as he started his attack.

Then Bucky watched as a rope came out of nowhere and looped around the rider’s neck, tightened and held strong as the bike moved out from beneath him and the rider was left soaring back through the air by the neck. The rider fell to the ground and the bike tumbled over some ways away, and neither Bucky or Natasha moved until a figure came crashing through the underbrush.

“Buck! Nat!” Steve called, hands on his thighs as he slowed to take deep breaths.

Sam came out behind him, looping the rope around his arm like he’d done it a million times before.

“Was ‘cowboy’ one of your strengths?” Bucky asked, bewildered.

“Nah,” Sam said, hitching the whole bundle up onto his shoulder. “That’s from real life.”

Bucky wasn’t quite sure how Sam’s real life cowboy skills translated to his character but Natasha’s impeccable aim did not, but video games, according to Clint, didn’t always make a lot of sense. Speaking of-

“You seen the others?” Bucky asked.

“No,” Steve said, and then pulled something out of the pocket on his jacket. “But look what I found.”

Bucky stepped closer, examining the object. It was a box, elaborately carved from wood with some sort of symbol etched onto the very top. There was a heavy set of locks arranged on the front of it.

“I don’t know what it is,” Steve said, still breathing heavily. “But Sam said in video games when you find boxes and stuff, you pick them up because they could be useful later. I thought we could put it in your backpack.”

“Space,” Bucky said.

“What?” Sam asked, joining them.

“That symbol right there,” Bucky told them, pointing to the top of the box. He didn’t know how he knew, or even what language it was, but he knew he was right. “It says ‘space.’”

“Linguistics,” Natasha said. “One of his strengths.”

“More like his only strength,” Sam said with a grin.

Bucky would’ve punched Sam but the roaring from the enemy riders came again and he turned his back to Steve quickly. 

“Put it in the pack and let’s go,” Bucky said hurriedly. “I lost sight of Tony when he threw me in a damn tree.”

“He what?” Steve asked.

“Later,” Natasha spat. “Let’s go.”

So they ran. Further into the jungle and toward the roaring of the engines despite the fact that their party wasn’t prepared for anything like a real battle. They’d managed to take down three riders between the four of them, but that had been mostly luck. 

They broke through into a bit of a clearing amongst the trees only to stop short as a rider came bursting through the trees at them. Before any of them had time to make a move, dodge or cower or bemoan their lack of skills, Clint came running into the clearing from the opposite direction. He took three bounding steps, launched himself into the air in a spin that, to Bucky at least, seemed to almost go by in slow motion. Clint brought his legs up as he spun, twisting his body around and then snapping his right leg out to land dead center in the rider’s chest.

The rider  _ flew _ off the bike to land some distance away, unmoving, and Clint landed gracefully on his feet as the bike skidded off to the side. He stood, looked at them over his shoulder and fucking  _ winked. _

“Come on, losers!” he called happily, motioning for them to join him as he headed off in the direction of more engines. The only one left for them to find was Tony, so Bucky set off after Clint with no hesitation at all despite the commentary.

They finally found Tony in another slight clearing, taking on five riders by himself, with a further four already down for the count next to their still rumbling bikes. He had a large branch in his hand and as they entered the clearing, he swung the massive piece of wood at one of the riders and sent him flying, dodged the bike as it skidded to the ground and turned to take on the next one.

And he looked damn good doing it. In Bucky’s humble opinion.

Two of the riders decided to double team Tony next, coming at him from different directions. Clint muttered profanity beside Bucky, but Bucky couldn’t take his eyes off of Tony as he threw the branch at one, taking him out, and then-

Tony took a quick step to the side of the other rider as it neared him, pushed the rider off with so much force that the man went flying into the trees beyond, and then as the bike kept moving, gripped the handle bars and used the momentum to not only swing the bike around, but to  _ jump up onto it.  _ He landed with one foot already on the pedal, twisted the handle and sped toward one of the two remaining riders.

“Did he just-” Steve sputtered.

“Looks like something Barnes would do,” Sam said

“Shut up,” Bucky muttered, then glanced to his left because surely Clint would have something to say about it but-

He was gone. 

Tony was hurtling towards one rider on his stolen bike, and Clint was speeding towards them both.

“Stark!” Clint bellowed, and Tony didn’t even have to glance up before he altered his course just enough for his and Clint’s paths to cross. 

Tony leaned forward on his bike. Clint lept, planted his foot on the seat Tony was no longer sitting on, used Tony’s massively broad shoulders for balance and pushed off in a huge jump. Tony corrected his course, used his momentum to slide his bike into the rider who had tried - and failed - to dodge, and tumbled off to the side before the bike made impact. 

The bike and the enemy, inexplicably, exploded.

Clint had aimed his jump impeccably and came down with a vicious kick to the back of the head of the final rider. The rider went sprawling with his bike and Clint landed gracefully off to the side at the same moment the bike from Tony’s rider exploded, and they both stood up in that ridiculous way every hollywood action star did when there was an explosion to be had. Slow motion and badass, with the incredibly violent explosion going off in the background and highlighting just how awesome they were.

Bucky was not too proud to admit that his jaw was, in fact, hanging open as he took in the scene Tony made.

“Wow,” Sam said, which was good. Someone should say it, and Bucky was currently at a loss for words.

As the debris settled and the sounds of the jungle once again took over instead of the roaring of motorcycles, they regathered and Natasha consulted the map. 

“So Tony and Clint are on battle duty from now on, right?” Sam asked, tugging Bucky over to him by the backpack so he could stuff his pilfered rope into the pack. Bucky let him do it, but then shrugged him off with a huff.

“That was fun,” Tony agreed. “Almost better than the suit.”

“We kicked ass,” Clint added, holding up his hand for a high five. Tony gave it to him with enthusiasm and they both grinned.

“This way,” Natasha gestured, and Bucky glanced up through the trees. He thought he caught a glimpse of smoke in the same direction Natasha had indicated and nodded, falling in beside Steve as Natasha and Tony led the way.

“Sort of frustrating, huh,” Steve murmured, glancing up at him with wide, dark eyes. It was still strange to see and hear certain aspects of his lifelong friend in someone who was a complete stranger.

Bucky grunted in agreement. “Can’t do anything to help, it seems,” he said lowly. “‘Cept get in the way.”

Steve sighed, but looked ahead with a bit of the same determination as Captain America shining through his expression. “We just have to keep going until Thor figures it out.”

Bucky didn’t say anything to that. He didn’t know Thor as well as he did the other Avengers; the god was off planet more often than not. And he didn’t have as much confidence in Thor’s ability to fix this type of situation. Thor knew more about magic, sure, but he certainly wasn’t an expert. He routinely went to ask his mother or, on one occasion, his brother Loki, about magic that had stumped the Avengers in previous battles. He supposed if Thor was wise enough to get Strange into the mix, they might be able to get their comrades out of this game.

But Bucky wasn’t going to hold his breath.

The best thing they could do was gather these stones and break the curse Nigel had told them about. He just hoped the two - two and a half if you counted Sam - battle-skilled characters could get them through the rest of the game with only three lives. Well. Two, in Clint’s case.

God, they were fucked.

They managed not to attract any more attacks, motorcycles or otherwise, as they made their way further into the jungle and Natasha’s map skills managed to bring them into a village of sorts. The people seemed friendly enough as they welcomed the group of six travelers eagerly, offered them rest and food near the large bonfire near the center of the rough circle of houses.

When asked, the village elder explained that the motorcycle gang, or whatever they were, had been terrorizing the village for months. Demanding money, stealing their food and supplies, sometimes kidnapping the villagers themselves. Their young lookout, a boy you couldn’t have been older than ten, had run back to tell them of the heros’ triumph over the villainous gang, and they had made a giant fire, food and drink, all to welcome the travelers who had saved them.

Oh, and they gave Tony the Infinity Stone that they’d been safeguarding.

“ Wait, so Nigel’s  _ trusted crew member _ heard ‘hide the stones from the  _ maniac villain _ so the world doesn’t  _ end  _ in fiery doom’ and in his infinite wisdom, just gave it to some random dude in a village in the middle of the jungle?” Clint demanded, grabbing the yellow gem from Tony’s hands so that he could shake it at the team in general. “This game is on shaky legs. Two stars. Maybe two and a half.”

After Bucky had stowed the gem in his pack, Sam offered to make margaritas because, “It’s my skill, dammit, I’m going to use it,” and the others had all fallen in around the fire as it grew dark and the company grew merry. The villagers heaped their plates full of delicious food, meats and vegetables, all covered in sauces that smelled amazing. Bucky wasn’t entirely sure how important eating was in a video game - other than the life counters they had tattooed on their arms, they didn’t seem to have any of those health bars that sometimes showed up in the games Clint played. But it wasn’t like it could hurt them, so Bucky took a seat next to Tony and tucked into his food.

“I guess if I’m sober in the real world, I shouldn’t drink any video game margaritas, huh?” Tony asked, watching as Sam began handing out colorful drinks. 

Bucky blinked, unsure how to navigate this type of conversation. He knew from Steve that Tony had  _ had _ a bit of a drinking problem, especially when he’d been - in Steve’s own words -  _ dying from metal poisoning. _ Bucky’s eyes flickered to Tony’s chest, to the distinct absence of a soft blue glow through his white shirt, then back to Tony’s face.

“Not that I really want to,” Tony added, popping another bit of food into his mouth. “Tequila was never really my vice.”

Bucky used the last bit of his bread to mop up whatever sauce had been on his vegetables and finished his plate. “Mine neither,” Bucky said eventually, setting his plate aside. “Preferred whisky, though most of what we could get our hands on hardly qualified.”

Tony chuckled, threw him a smile. “Yeah? Always preferred vodka myself. The cheaper the better, if you can believe it,” he said, laughing.

“You mean to tell me you had access to the best liquor money could buy and you drank, what-”

“UV, Svedka, Karkov,” Tony listed, grinning. “Rhodey got me this one bottle that was shaped like an alien head and it was bright green.”

Bucky laughed. “How about instead of bright green whatever that was you drank in college, we get some dessert.”

“Sure,” Tony agreed, and Bucky got up to grab them some sweet-looking chocolate things from the table the villagers had set out for the food.

He brought them back and sat down, watching as Tony dug into his dessert with gusto, completely forgetting that Sam had even made the margaritas. Bucky let a smile take over his face and sliced off a piece of his own, popping it into his mouth and savoring the flavor.

“This is fantastic,” Tony said after another mouthful, groaning in pleasure. “How is it that a village in the middle of the jungle with huts for houses can make cake this fucking good?”

Bucky hoped it was dark enough, and that the bonfire lent enough of a colored tint to his face, that Tony wouldn’t be able to see his blush. Those sounds… Bucky took another bite of his cake, nodding in agreement.

“Wait a sec,” Tony said. “Isn’t cake one of your weaknesses?”

Bucky paused mid-bite, pulling back to look at what remained of the cake on his plate, already half gone. He sent Tony a startled glance, eyes wide.

“What-” Bucky started. “Shit. What-  _ Fuck. _ ”

“What’s wrong?” Natasha asked, sitting down on the other side of Tony and leaning forward to look at Bucky with a frown.

“Bucky ate cake,” Tony said, his own eyes slightly panicked. 

“So?” Natasha said, then seemed to remember. “Oooh.”

“What? What, oh? What’s happening?” Bucky asked. He didn’t feel any different. His throat wasn’t closing, he wasn’t breaking out in hives that he could tell, none of the telltale signs of an allergy that he’d become familiar with in his friendship with Steve Rogers, the one kid in all of Brooklyn that had managed to be allergic to fucking everything.

He felt fine.

“I feel fine,” Bucky said, hopeful.

“You look… fine,” Tony said slowly. “Maybe it just means you really like cake?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, letting out a relieved breath. “Yeah, maybe it-”

There was an explosion before everything went dark, Bucky was almost sure of it, except he didn’t see it or hear it or feel it or- 

Oh.  _ Oh. He _ was what had exploded.

Well fuck.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony Stark Bingo T4 - Puzzle

It didn’t seem to matter how hard he tried, Bucky’s character was clearly unable to land on his feet, and while the first time Natasha had been the only one around to see it,  _ this  _ time everyone was there. 

“Enough,” Steve said, silencing Clint’s guffaws. “Someone dying isn’t a laughing matter, Clint.”

Clint was still giggling when he said, “It is when the dude explodes from cake, Cap.”

“Regardless,” Natasha said. “We need to keep better track of weaknesses. We only have one stone out of six and we’ve already lost three lives.”

“We’re just lucky Bucky exploding didn’t also kill Tony,” Steve said, and Bucky glanced at where Tony was standing, hands on his hips in what seemed to be Smolder Bravestone’s signature pose. 

“Where are we supposed to go next?” Sam asked, finishing off his margarita.

“According to the map,” Natasha started, pointing toward a path that led out from the far side of the village. “The Bazaar.”

“I’m not going anywhere while it’s dark,” Clint said. “Jumanji animals eat people and I’m not going through that again.”

“Won’t have to,” Tony chimed in, gesturing. “It seems time isn’t exactly linear in this video game.”

And Tony was right. It had been darkening as they fought their way through the biker gang, and the sun had set fully by the time they’d sat down to enjoy food and drink with the villagers. And while Bucky had indeed exploded for a short time, he certainly hadn’t been gone for an entire night. And yet the sun was already beginning to rise. The bonfire was now cold ash and the villagers, who had minutes before been milling about, were just beginning to come out of their huts.

“Weird,” Bucky murmured. He wasn’t tired at all, not like he would’ve been after a full tilt run from a dangerous wild animal, followed by an all-out battle against a mounted gang with rocket launchers. He should’ve been exhausted, even more so because his avatar wasn’t a super soldier, but he felt just like he had at the beginning of this horrible adventure: disturbed and slightly wary, but all in all ready to get shit done.

“Please, take this with you as a token of gratitude.”

Bucky turned to find the village elder addressing Tony, handing over what looked like a large fruit, possibly a mango. If Jumanji had mangoes.

“You’ve already given us so much-” Steve started, but Tony hushed him with a hand. 

“Thank you very much,” Tony told the elder, who smiled a creaky smile and turned to shuffle away. Tony gestured for Bucky as they all headed out on the path that Natasha had indicated earlier. Bucky fell in beside Tony, turning his back, and his backpack, so that Tony could access it.

As Tony tucked the fruit into Bucky’s pack, he turned to Steve. “Nice character gives you something, you take it,” Tony said easily. “Might be useful later on.”

“Yeah, like that box you found, Steve,” Bucky agreed.

“Box?” Tony asked. “What box?”

“Show him,” Steve told Bucky and Bucky sighed as he hauled the backpack off and went digging through it again. When he finally managed to tug it free from the overstuffed pack, he handed it off to Tony.

Tony shifted it around in his grip, looking at it from every possible angle. “It’s a puzzle box. And it’s got a symbol kinda like the Infinity Stone the elder gave us.”

“Really?” Natasha asked, slowly down from where she led the pack so that she could join their discussion. Sam and Clint continued on, bickering about something Bucky couldn’t hear.

Natasha tugged Bucky aside and he stumbled abruptly, scowling at her as she dug through his pack until she found the stone, shining yellow in the rising sun. “I’m not just some pack horse, Nat,” he grumbled.

“Actually,” Tony said idly as he continued to inspect Steve’s box, throwing Bucky a wink. “That’s exactly what you are.”

“But you’re also a dictionary,” Natasha said happily, then stuck the stone in Bucky’s face. “What’s this say?”

Bucky tugged it out of her grip, making sure to give her a glare as he did so, and turned it around before grudgingly saying, “Mind.”

“Mind and space,” Tony muttered. “Did Jarvis ever tell us the names of the stones?”

“Yeah, he listed them at the end of his story,” Steve said, frowning. “I think ‘space’ was one of them.”

“So there’s a stone in here,” Tony said excitedly. “We just need to figure out how to open it.”

“Steve’s a thief and a pickpocket,” Natasha said. “I bet he could open it.”

Tony almost looked like he was going to protest. In all honesty, Tony’s genius brain was still intact and he could probably figure it out if given enough time. But instead, he nodded and handed it back to Steve. 

“I don’t know how to open it,” Steve protested. 

“Try,” Tony said. “Your character knows how, you just gotta tap into it.”

Tony continued on ahead, leaving Steve to fiddle with the box. Natasha dropped in next to Steve to help him navigate it and so Bucky hurried up so he could walk beside Tony, tossing the yellow stone from hand to hand as they made their way down the path. Bucky didn’t say anything, but then, you rarely had to with Tony. Enough silence and Tony would generally fill the lull with words.

“Our fearless leader is a bit adrift in a world where he can’t just punch something into submission,” Tony said, raising an amused eyebrow at Bucky before looking off into the distance. His face did that thing his character seemed to be so good at, where his jaw squared and his eyes went distant and he looked handsome as fuck.

Bucky shook his head and glanced back at Steve, who was twisting the box in a way that made Bucky think he might actually be making progress. 

“Give him something to do,” Tony said, losing that dumb, hot look and grinning instead, “and maybe he’ll stop being such a killjoy.”

Bucky smirked. Tony wasn’t fooling him. Steve had spent his entire childhood and part of his adult life feeling absolutely useless, especially when it came to helping others. Despite the hilarity of the situation and Bucky’s propensity to tease Steve about it, it certainly wouldn’t hurt for their leader to feel like he was once again part of the team. Understanding that and suppressing his own instincts in order to give Cap a win was what made Tony such an amazing hero.

An amazing person.

But Bucky also knew that Tony didn’t like when people pointed that out to him, so Bucky just hummed and nodded. He grinned outright when there was an elated shout ten minutes later and Steve came bounding up to show Bucky he’d opened the puzzle box successfully.

Inside the box was nestled a blue stone quite similar to the one still in Bucky’s hands, and the symbol that had been on the box was etched into it just like the Mind Stone. So they had two stones now, a third of the way to their goal. They just had to find four more, avoid dying, and then they could get out of this stupid game. Hopefully.

“Hey guys!” Clint called from up ahead of them. “I think I see the next village!”

“Great,” Steve said, and Bucky could tell he had a bit more of his determination back. “Put the stones in Buck’s pack and we’ll get going.”

“Should we keep all the stones in one place, though?” Natasha asked, hand dipping into the box and picking up the Space Stone. “What if we’re attacked?”

“Best not to keep all our eggs in one basket,” Tony agreed, eyeing Bucky’s pack. He turned back to Steve. “You found that one, Cap. Will it fit in one of your pockets?”

Steve made a show of patting himself down, then seemed to find an adequate place amongst his character’s many layers of black clothing. “Yeah, it’ll be safe in here, hand it over.”

Natasha handed it over, Steve tucked it away, and they all hurried to catch up with Sam and Clint, who stood waiting for them in front of a large arched entrance. Beyond, Bucky could see what he imagined was a typical busy marketplace of somewhere aptly named The Bazaar. As they made their way through, the smell of spices and breads washed over them, the sounds of merchants hawking their wares, village folk haggling the price or laughing with friends. There were tables and stalls everywhere, people milling about and not paying anyone in their party much mind at all.

“So there’s gotta be some sort of mission here, right?” Sam asked, stepping aside so a portly old lady could hussle by them.

“The map wouldn’t have sent us here otherwise,” Natasha said. “Every place we’ve gone so far has had a stone.”

Bucky nodded. They’d had to defeat something in order to get the first two. Defeating the biker gang had gotten them the yellow stone, and Steve defeating the puzzle box had gotten them the blue one. He wondered what they’d have to defeat here and whether or not it would be something dangerous or innocuous.

“Ooooh,” Clint said suddenly, hopping over to a wall full of flyers and posters. Some were brightly colored and newly posted, while others had clearly been there for weeks, faded by the sun and ripped in places. “I usually ignore village message boards but-”

“In the interest of getting the fuck out of here,” Sam continued, sidling up next to Clint to read through the postings.

“Ah, shit!” Sam said suddenly, slapping at his arm. He flicked something off, his face twisted in disgust, before shaking his arm out.

“What was that?” Natasha asked slowly.

“Just a mosqui…” Sam trailed off, looking up. “...to?”

And then he exploded. Just like Bucky had with the cake.

“Goddamnit,” Clint said, turning away from the postings and glancing up into the sky.

They all waited for the telltale  _ ping _ to sound before Sam came hurtling down from above to land on his feet, a little wobbly but seemingly back to health. He turned his arm over and Bucky saw quite clearly that his tattoo was down to two bars.

“So fucking unfair,” Sam muttered. “I walk through a whole jungle and never get stung but the moment I step into civilization-” he scoffed.

“Maybe we should try to find you some bug spray in the bazaar,” Clint offered, patting Sam on the shoulder.

“Or we could just beat this fucking game so we can go home,” Sam grumbled, turning back to the postings board with Clint.

“Anything?” Steve asked, throwing glances around them, watching for signs of trouble. Bucky took a glance around too, using his skills as a sniper to try and pick out any overt signs that they were being followed or watched. He didn’t see anything, but that didn’t mean they weren’t out there.”

“Not really,” Sam said. “Book club posting, something about registering your mongoose at town hall, whatever that means, and a flyer about some dance competition.”

“Dance?” Clint echoed, looking at where Sam was pointing. “That’s one of my skills! What’s the prize?”

“Uh,” Sam murmured. “Doesn’t say- oh. The champion shall be known as the most Powerful in all the land?”

“Power stone,” Tony chirped, snapping his fingers. “Bet we get a stone if we win that thing.”

“Right,” Natasha agreed. “How do we enter?”

“Looks like we just show up,” Sam answered. “Town Square. No time listed.”

Bucky looked up and around, trying to spot something that might resemble a Town Square, almost forgetting for a moment that he was missing the top two feet of his body. He sighed heavily. “Where’s ‘Town Square’ then?”

Everyone looked at Natasha.

Who was eyeing what looked to be a blank sheet of paper amongst the other posters. She put her finger on it, looked to their right, then left, squinted at the paper as she adjusted her glasses, then nodded. She turned, gave the paper one more glance, then said, “Follow me, boys.”

So they followed her. Natasha wove them through the Bazaar with relative ease, only stopping a few times to reorient herself based on landmarks. They turned left at a statue of a woman, another left under the big, bright red awning of the local bakery. Right after that they passed the fountain, and then through an alleyway they came out into a large open area that would definitely qualify as a Town Square.

Even if it wasn’t exactly square in shape.

There were lights strung up all around, a large table with what looked like a radio plugged into some janky-looking speakers. The middle of the square was empty of people, though it was more of a large circle with elaborately colored tiles making up what Bucky assumed would be the dance floor for this competition. People were gathered all along the sides, some in fancy costumes, others in what seemingly passed for everyday clothes in Jumanji.

“Welcome to the First Annual Dance-Off!” came a loud voice, and a colorfully dressed gentleman strutted his way into the center of the space. “Participants! Ready yourselves, for once the music begins, it’s every man for himself!”

“Would you look at that,” Clint said happily. “Just in time.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow at him, though Clint wasn’t actually looking. Instead, he was stretching his arms, twisting this way and that, as if he were getting ready for a bout in the ring with Natasha back at Stark Tower.

“Good luck,” Bucky told him sarcastically.

“Oh, you’re going out there too, Barnes,” Natasha told him, and Bucky whipped his head around to stare at her as she, too, began to stretch.

“Dancing is not one of my skills,” Bucky told her. “I read squiggles and carry shit. You want me to pop my little box out again for you?”

“The more people we have in the competition,” Steve said, bouncing in place as he watched the announcer leave the dance floor. “The better chance we have of winning. Come on, Buck.”

“If Cap’s dancing, you really have no excuse,” Tony said with a wink, then deliberately unbuttoned another of his shirt’s buttons. Dramatically. Bucky could feel heat rise in his cheeks as Tony’s eyebrows wiggled up and down. He wouldn’t actually mind dancing with Tony, but he didn’t exactly want to do it as a 4-foot tall black dude in a video game.

“Put on your dance shoes, Barnes,” Sam told him with a smirk.

“I’ve got my dance  _ backpack _ on,” Bucky snapped back, gesturing wildly. “I am the team’s pack mule, how am I supposed to dance with this load of shit on my back?”

“Better figure it out,” Clint tossed over his shoulder as the radio was turned on, the telltale white noise ringing out as the host looked for an appropriate station. “It’s go time!”

The distinctive opening notes of  _ You Make My Dreams _ rang out and Clint laughed gleefully as he rushed onto the dance floor with the other contestants. 

“Hall and Oates? Really?” Sam muttered, shaking his head as he followed Clint. 

Natasha got behind Bucky and  _ pushed _ and so he followed as the rest of their team went out and started dancing. Bucky had danced his fair share before the war, but he knew for a fact that that kind of dancing wasn’t really popular anymore, not to mention whatever passed as dancing in a  _ video game _ . And as he cautiously started moving his hips to the beat, bouncing on his feet and twisting towards Tony, he realized that this particular dance competition wasn’t going to be exactly normal at all. And that his fears had been largely for nothing.

Tony twisted abruptly toward him, grabbed Bucky’s hand and tugged. And as Bucky stumbled into an awkward hold with a man twice his size, he watched as one of the other contestants went flying just over where his head had been a second earlier. The man crashed into a pile of boxes at the side of the dance floor and did not get up. 

Tony twirled them further into the center and Bucky was almost too distracted by what was going on around them to even appreciate that he was dancing with Tony at all. People were flying this way and that, ducking and punching, legs flipping out to catch others in the stomach, hips snapping back to make people stumble. They were dancing, sure, but they were also taking every single opportunity to throw hands at anyone who got close to them.

“Fighting,” Tony said, spinning Bucky away for a hot second, ducking under some woman’s otherwise perfectly aimed kick, before reeling him back in again.

“What?” Bucky asked, breaking their hold so he could dance back and out of the way of a charging young man. Tony held out his foot and the man tripped, tumbling face first into the dirt.

“Dance fighting,” Tony clarified, pulling Bucky back into his embrace as they spun away from another dueling couple. “Clint’s skill is fucking dance  _ fighting _ .”

Bucky watched, wincing, as Sam took a knee to the gut and went down, only to be pulled off the dance floor entirely by what seemed to be the host’s henchmen. “This game is so fucked up,” Bucky muttered, then squawked as someone abruptly cut in and spun him away from Tony altogether.

Before physically picking Bucky up and  _ hurling him  _ into a pile of crates at the edge of the dance floor, which was beginning to look more and more like an arena, all things considered. Bucky heaved himself out of the debris to find most of the contestants had been eliminated, including Steve, Natasha and, as Bucky watched, Tony, who spun the wrong way and took an elbow to the face at just the wrong moment.

Bucky watched as Tony stumbled into the onlookers, and then lost him entirely. 

Clint, on the other hand, was still going strong. They were about halfway through the song and Clint took an elaborate couple of hopping steps to the beat before he planted his right foot heavily.

“Well listen to this!” he shouted gleefully, clearly enjoying himself as he popped his hip hard, hands going up as he made himself a nice target for the closest contestant. 

As soon as the contestant made a move, Clint swayed to the side, spinning elegantly on his toes before reaching out to grab the man’s arm. Clint spun the man exactly where he wanted him, then raised his leg and planted his heavy duty boot right in the man’s ass, sending him flying into the sidelines.

Clint swung his hips to the beat a few more times, did a short little air guitar when the riff came in, then took a running start as he sang at the top of his lungs, “I’m down on the daaaaaaydream! Oh that sleepwalk should be over by now, I know!”

He jumped, spun in the air and landed with his legs wrapped around the shoulders of a remaining contestant. Then he used one of Natasha’s signature moves to twist his body down and around, using his momentum and the tight grip his legs had on the contestant to fling the person off of the dance floor. He spun dramatically as he followed the movement, came out of the spin and jumped before flinging his hand out dramatically.

“Ah, you!”

He skipped toward the remaining three contestants, a man and two women, and added a little shuffle to his step, popping his feet in and out just as easily as breathing and perfectly in time with the music. He took a double step, let out a little, “Ooh, ooh-ooh, oo-ooh!” along with the backup singers and sent a kick directly into the man’s chest before dancing away from the remaining women.

Clint reached out as the music bopped along, tugged one of the women into his arms and hurled her up and over his shoulders to land with her face in the dirt. He sang along again, circling the last opponent with that shuffling step that made him look like he wasn’t even trying. 

“Waiting for, waiting for, waiting for,” Clint sang, then threw himself into one of those runs that Bucky had seen gymnasts do. Cartwheels into back handsprings into flips, before he rolled out and up, feet first, to catch the last person right beneath the chin. The woman went flying, barely missing Bucky when she landed, and Clint did a little twirl and a hop back into the center of the dance floor.

The last notes of the song faded out and Clint grinned, taking a little bow before throwing a wink at - Bucky looked - a smirking Natasha. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have our champion!” the host bellowed, grinning from ear to ear as he joined Clint in the center of the square. 

The rest of the crowd, though most sported cuts or bruises, clapped politely as the host gestured one of his henchmen forward. Bucky watched as the man led a dog into the center of the dance floor and the host took the leash, an elaborate purple thing that sparkled in the sun, and passed it on to Clint.

“What’s this?” Clint asked, clearly confused.

“Your prize, of course!” the host said with a wide smile. “Enjoy!” the host called and he glided off the dance floor and into the gathering crowd of people.

“What the-!” Clint yelled. “Where the hell is my stone!?”

Bucky lost sight of Clint for a few moments, but then Tony came into his line of sight and Bucky let out a sigh of relief. He’d only taken an elbow to the face, sure, but who knew what could kill you in this game.

“You alright?” Tony asked, helping him to his feet. He looked half worried, half amused.

“I should be asking you that,” Bucky said, dusting himself off before reaching up to poke Tony in his stupidly square jaw. “Elbow to the face is not a pleasant feeling.”

Tony shrugged, seemingly unfazed. “Doesn’t hurt any,” he said, poking at his face himself. “My character doesn’t seem to get hurt easily.”

“Yeah, well,” Bucky said, unsure how to explain why seeing Tony get elbowed, even as an entirely different person in a video game, made him worry.

“Tell you what,” Tony said, smirking. “I promise to be careful if you promise not to eat any more cake.”

Bucky smiled. “Yeah, yeah. I explode  _ one time _ …” he trailed off, laughing.

They found where their team had gathered at the edge of the Town Square and joined them just in time to catch Clint complaining about his prize.

“-and he just gave me this dog,” Clint was saying. Sam was crouched in front of the animal, hands buried in his fur, as Steve and Natasha frowned down at it. The dog was yellow and fluffy, not unlike a golden retriever, but much, much smaller. Probably 20 pounds dripping wet, his little butt wiggled enthusiastically any time his tail wagged and his paws were dainty little things. The animal was clearly at ease, tongue lolling out and eyes closed as Sam gave him head scratches.

“I thought we were supposed to get a stone,” Clint grumbled. “This game is about to lose another star, Nat, seriously, did you  _ see _ me out there!? I fucking rocked. I deserve a power stone, damnit!”

“What’s the mutt’s name?” Bucky asked, eyeing the animal.

“Dunno,” Sam said. “All he’s got on his collar is a little- oh.”

“Oh? What do you mean ‘oh’?” Clint said, crouching down beside Sam. They fiddled with the dog’s collar for a moment before Clint let out an exclamation and popped up excitedly.

He held out what looked like a locket, but instead of pictures inside, it was opened to reveal a stone quite a bit smaller than the other two, maybe half the size. It was purple, and as Clint held it out for him to read, Bucky could just make out the tiny symbol etched into it.

“Power,” Bucky said, smirking up at Clint. 

“Congrats, Dancing Queen,” Tony added.

“Yes!” Clint yelled, pumping his fist in the air.

“How nice of you to win that for us,” came a deep voice from behind them. They all whirled around to find a group of unsavory looking men, all dressed in fighting leathers, scars and scowls abound, arms crossed and looking very intimidating.

“Hand it over,” the leader said, and held out his hand.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Brief mention of an animal death in this chapter (but not really a death because this is a video game). Still, if you would like to know details of what happens before continuing, please feel free to contact my on tumblr.

On one hand, Tony was a very impressive fighter in this game - when it wasn’t also a dance competition - and it was incredibly amusing to watch him plow his way through a sea of bad guys with his large, muscular arms and his little sound effects.

“Kapow!” Tony yelled, using an uppercut to literally send a man flying up into the sky. The man did not fall back down, so Bucky could only assume he was dead and, perhaps, pixelated into nothing. Either that or Tony’s character literally had enough muscle on him that he could punch a man into space.

“Is that all you’ve got!?” Tony taunted, wading into another swarm of enemies as Clint did backflips and cartwheels around him, taking out just as many men with slightly more flare and a lot more laughter.

Sam had dug through Bucky’s pack and found a large knife, and was using it halfway decently to take out anybody who got by both Tony and Clint. The rest of them, plus the dog, had been herded into a corner of the town square, essentially useless in a fist fight, much to their collective annoyance.

Someone yelled, “Duck!” but everyone’s voices were so strange to Bucky’s ears, and he was too focused on watching his teammates fight, that he didn’t have any idea who had actually yelled it.

“Bam!” Tony yelled out, sweeping his leg around to take out two guys at one time. “Yeah, come at me! I can do this all day!”

Bucky definitely heard Natasha snort, even over the noise of the street fight, and he spared a quick moment to throw a wink at Steve’s scowling face.

“Yeah, I get it,” Steve said without being prompted. “Shut up.”

“Hi-yah!” Tony shouted again as he took yet another guy out, throwing him into a wall with a backwards swing of a powerful arm. The man crumpled to the ground and as Bucky watched, he faded from view.

“Do you think he does this all the time?” Sam asked, bringing Bucky’s focus back to the team. “And we just can’t hear him because he’s in the suit?”

Sam took out a stray guy, using the momentum from the man’s running jump to slam him into the ground face first.

Bucky smiled at the comment, almost sad Tony couldn’t hear it himself, and then his eyes strayed towards the dance floor Clint had won his competition on and he frowned. His thoughts skipped back onto their original track as he watched another group of men appear out of thin air, immediately charging towards their group.

On the one hand, Tony was doing a great job.

On the other hand…

“This is never ending, guys,” Bucky said loudly, making sure he was heard over the din of fighting. “I’m not sure we can win this.”

“Friends?”

Clint dropped down from a high jump and exhaled loudly, brushing his arms off as he huffed. “I don’t think we’re  _ supposed _ to win this,” Clint said, breathing heavily.

“What do you mean?” Natasha asked, stepping forward. Clint bent to pick up a rock and flung it hard at an oncoming enemy. The enemy exploded, and Clint laughed, looking toward Bucky with a jubilant smile and wiggling eyebrows.

“Focus, bird brain,” Bucky told him.

“ _ Comrades _ ?”

“Some fights,” Clint explained as Sam took out another guy behind him, “we’re meant to lose.”

“What?” Bucky spat.

“We lose, we die,” Natasha clarified, clearly not happy about Clint’s thought process.

“Not necessarily,” Clint chirped, then took two lunging steps and jumped, kicking a man in the head who was about to put a knife in Tony’s exposed back. Tony himself was unaware, laughing as he threw men this way and that.

Clint cartwheeled back into their little circle of discussion – and Bucky was 100% convinced he was just doing it to show off at this point – before continuing with, “Sometimes when you lose, it triggers a cut scene.”

“ _ Warriors of Earth!” _

“What, Steve!?” Bucky finally yelled, turning toward his friend.

Steve stood there, baffled, stance ready to fight even though his character wasn’t equipped with the skills to be anything more than a hindrance. Steve blinked at Bucky. “What?”

“What are you yelling about?” Bucky asked again, gesturing widely for him to continue whatever he’d needed to say now that Steve had their attention.

“I-“ Steve began. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Bucky echoed, scowling. “Then what-“

Bucky’s gaze skittered to the side, where he saw a bushy tail wagging wildly as the butt it was attached to poked halfway out of a small gap in the wall behind them. “What is the dog doing?” Bucky asked instead.

Steve turned toward where Bucky was staring, as did Natasha. Clint back flipped back into the fight, the ass, and Sam checked their surroundings quick before joining them in watching the wiggly butt slide the rest of the way through what looked to be a  _ brick wall _ . A moment later, a wet nose and a cute pair of eyes popped out of the same hole, little tongue lolling happily.

Bucky eyed the wall, then shooed the dog back through the gap. “Watch out, pooch,” he said, and when the dog’s head disappeared, plowed his leg as hard as he could into the wall.

“Bucky-” Steve started to shout, because it looked like Bucky was about to smash his fragile foot into a wall of solid concrete brick – even Bucky himself was a little bit nervous – but when he connected, all they heard was the splintering of wood as the gap widened fractionally.

“Painted to look like brick,” Natasha said.

“My character’s not strong enough,” Bucky said, then turned back toward the fight, where Tony and Clint were still fighting almost twenty men. Tony’s character was probably more capable of taking on multiple opponents, and Clint’s character, while not as strong, could probably manage to break the barrier they needed to escape. Decision made, Bucky opened his mouth to call for Clint.

“Wait, Buck, hold on!” Steve said urgently. “There’s a- yeah! Hold on, I found a lock, I think it’s a door!”

Bucky turned back, watched as Steve pulled out a pouch of tools and went to work on something that looked very much like a plain old red brick. Maybe the lock was like the map, where the only one who could see it was the character who had the skills to do so.

Bucky watched Steve’s brow furrow further and further as he listened to Tony in the background.

“Kablam! Pow! Take that!”

He resisted the urge to tell Steve to hurry up, knowing full well that wouldn’t help anyone and would only annoy Steve. And while annoying Steve was one of the great joys in Bucky’s life, now was simply not the time.

“Ah-hah!” Steve said with a grin, and Bucky’s patience was rewarded as a door appeared, visible to everyone now that it was unlocked, and creaked open to reveal a shadowed, hidden passageway beyond.

“Nice work, Steve,” Bucky said, then turned toward the fight. “Tony! Clint! Sam! Let’s go!”

Natasha went through the door first, then Steve. Bucky ushered Sam through next, then turned to watch as Tony swung one of the largest of their current group of enemies towards the rest, using him like a bowling ball to take out as many of the men as he could. Then both he and Clint turned to head for the door. Clint jumped through, then Tony, and Bucky followed quickly, slamming the door shut behind him and throwing the lock.

He took a step back, eyeing the door cautiously to see if the group of enemies would follow them, but it seemed they did not have Steve’s skill. Either that, or the door was hidden once more and they – unbelievably, but it was a game, what could you do? – had no idea where the good guys had vanished to.

“I was having fun,” Tony said, complaint creeping into his tone as Bucky turned.

“Too bad,” Sam said firmly. “We need to finish this game so I can be black again.”

“And so we’re not stuck in a video game forever?” Steve asked.

“And so we don’t die?” Bucky added, smirking.

“I said what I said,” Sam huffed. “Now let’s move.”

“Follow me!” 

“Follow who?” Bucky asked, and Natasha shrugged as she fiddled with a small lantern hung on a short post connected to the wall. 

“This passageway isn’t on the map,” she explained, finally managing to unhook the lantern and bring it down from the wall. She gestured to the other side, where another lantern sat flickering quietly, and Sam began the same process she had. “Maybe Steve? Since he got us here?”

Steve nodded, he was at the front of the pack anyway, with the dog bouncing excitedly beside him, and took the lantern Natasha held out to him. Clint skipped up to join him and he turned to head deeper into the passageway. Sam held his lantern out to Tony.

“Bring up the rear,” Sam instructed. “That way we got a fighter on either end.”

Tony took the lamp and fell into line behind Bucky, with Sam and Natasha ahead of him. They seemed to be going slightly downhill as they went further into the passage, and they passed by several doors on their way, all locked. Steve opened each one to find either empty rooms or nearly empty rooms, with detritus strewn across the floor or, in one case, a solitary chair sat in the very center.

“That’s not creepy at all,” Tony said, shutting the door firmly. 

They finally managed to find a door that opened into a larger space, though they had been walking for long enough, and it had gotten cold enough, that Bucky rather thought they were further underground than he’d like to be. There was nothing of note in this larger space, but the opposite side from where they entered stood yet another door, this one slightly more elaborately decorated and carved than the others had been. A good sign.

Or a bad one, Bucky supposed, depending on what lay beyond it.

“Alright Steve, have at it,” Clint said, taking the lamp from Steve’s hands so he could pull out his tools.

Natasha brushed past him and reached for the handle, turned it with surprising ease and swung the door open. She turned to look at all of them, eyebrow raised.

“That was easy,” Clint announced.

“Too easy?” Tony asked, even as the dog gave an excited yip and went through the doorway, disappearing into the dark.

“Probably,” Clint agreed with a grin and a nod, but then strode through the door after the dog. 

“That says something,” Sam stated, arms crossed. “Something about the size of a dog’s brain and comparing it to Clint’s, and I can’t quite put my finger on what, but it definitely says something.”

“Holy shit!” Clint shouted from the room beyond, and if anyone had any doubts before, they evaporated as they all hustled into action to see if Clint was in trouble for being an idiot.

The lanterns weren’t great illuminators, but once they’d all made it through the door, the room lit up as sconces that bordered the walls flared to life. The room was wide and tall, with trees hugging the walls so closely it seemed as if half of them were  _ inside  _ the walls. The sconces were attached to the trees, it seemed, some sitting placidly against the trunks while others hung from their limbs. Vines wove in and out from the branches, creating loops and shadows that fell across the floor.

And the floor itself was one giant design. Small, elaborate tiles decorated the entire expanse, starting at the door they’d come through and branching out widely in intricate designs interwoven with pebbles and rocks. To Bucky, the design looked more or less like a tree, it’s branches reaching across the floor until they reached about midway through the room, where they curled to a stop before even larger tiles.

These larger tiles were set in a more static pattern, like a checkerboard, though some of the tree roots could be seen peeking through the spaces between them, disturbing them slightly from their precision. Each of these tiles had numbers carved into them, swooped and elegant writing that was nonetheless easily recognizable. 

Bucky counted. The large tiles were in a grid that was six wide and ten long, and at the very end of the grid stood a door that spanned the entire height of the wall and half the width. It was gigantic, elaborately carved with designs and pictures, all centered around one symbol.

“This is definitely where we’re supposed to be,” Bucky said as the rest of his team took in their surroundings. “That door says ‘Time.’”

Natasha glanced at the door. “I suppose it’s too much to ask that the large, incredibly heavy-looking door also be unlocked?”

“Yeah,” Tony said, grinning. “I don’t think we’re that lucky.”

“Only one way to find out though,” Clint said, and began walking toward the door.

“Clint, we need a plan,” Steve protested.

“This  _ is  _ a plan, Cap,” Clint argued. “Unless you got a better one?”

Steve was silent. Bucky hadn’t come up with a different plan either, but he was certain just walking across an elaborately decorated floor in a room heavily reminiscent of those old movies Tony had him watch once was not their best bet. 

“Uh-oh,” Clint said.

Bucky’s head whipped around, only to find that the moment Clint had stepped on one of the larger tiles, it had depressed. Just like in those movies. 

“Nice going, Indy,” Tony snorted.

After a few moments of weight silence had passed and nothing happened, everyone seemed to slowly exhale. 

“Well, we’re not dead,” Clint offered pointedly, looking at Tony. “So I think Marion should shut up.”

“Children,” Natasha said, stern.

“Marion would kick your ass,” Tony said easily. “And we  _ all _ know it.”

“I don’t even know who Marion is,” Steve said, exasperated. “Please, can we focus?” 

“Maybe it’s a code,” Sam offered, and went to Clint’s side as he examined the various numbers spread out across the floor. Clint had stepped on a seven tile and hadn’t moved since it had sunk beneath him. 

Tony seemed to let the argument go, whatever it was, and joined them. “Six across, ten tall, zero through nine means six of each number. Six of us, that can’t be a coincidence,” he said.

“My head and tail both equal are.”

Bucky turned at that, looking for whoever had spoken, but found all of his teammates watching Tony silently. Bucky frowned, turned back to find the dog was pacing behind Clint and Tony, eyes focused on the door at the far end of the room.

“My middle slender as a bee.”

Bucky turned again, all the way around this time, looking for the voice. It didn’t sound like any of the characters they were inhabiting, he was sure. It was a bit high-pitched, almost like a little girl, but the tone was serious enough to be off-putting.

“There’s six of us,” Tony said. “So maybe a sequence of six numbers, but there has to be a clue. Without one there’s 720 variations and we don’t have time to just go through them all.

“Maybe the tiles make a path?” Natasha suggested. “Step on the right ones and nothing happens?”

“Then why the numbers?” Sam questioned.

“Whether I stand on head or heel.”

_ Where  _ was that extra voice coming from? Bucky turned the other way scanning the trees slowly as his teammates discussed options. There was nobody else in the room with them, he was certain. Even in a video game he knew what to look for. 

“Well he’s on a seven and nothing happened,” Steve said. “Maybe sevens are safe?”

“But the sevens don’t connect at all,” Tony argued. “You’d have to jump across three squares to get to the third one and while Clint and I could do it, Natasha might have some difficulty.”

Bucky watched as Natasha raised an eyebrow. Her character might be an old white dude, but her attitude and body language came through loud and clear.

“No offense,” Tony added, and Natasha shrugged.

“Is quite the same to you or me,” the voice came again.

“Well we have to try something,” Sam said. “Who has the most lives? Someone should maybe try to walk across and see what happens.”

Was nobody else hearing this extra voice? Was Bucky going crazy? Did his list of attributes include hearing voices? He bumped his chest to get his little square to pop out, read through it quick- no. Nothing. Zoology, weapons valet, and linguist. Nothing that would explain hearing voices.

“What are you doing, Bucky?” Tony asked, and Bucky looked up to find that the rest of the group was carefully watching as Steve took Clint’s place on the first depressed tile.

“What is  _ Steve _ doing?” Bucky countered, alarmed. 

“Him and I have all our lives, but since I can kick bad guy ass, we decided Steve should try to cross first,” Tony explained. “Now, what are  _ you _ doing?”

“You hearing voices or anything?” Bucky asked, somewhat distracted as he watched Steve step onto the next tile, a three. It sunk slightly, just like the tile before, but nothing happened.

“No,” Tony answered easily, thought his brows lowered in a worried frown. “Are you?”

“But if my head should be cut off.”

“That,” Bucky said quickly, snapping his fingers as he glanced toward where he  _ thought _ the voice might be coming from, but there were only trees. “Right there, it just spoke again.”

Steve stepped on the next one and Bucky turned back. Steve was clearly aiming for a straight line. Nothing happened with this one either.

“What did it say?” Tony asked.

“Something about cutting off heads,” Bucky said, his eyes pinned to Steve as he kept going. Still safe.

“Well that’s ominous,” Tony mumbled, turning to watch Steve himself. “How many tiles is that, four?”

“Five,” Bucky murmured back as Steve took another step. They were all watching closely as Steve progressed, the others all huddled close to the edge of the large tiled grid, but-

“The matter’s true though passing strange.”

Bucky turned toward the voice again and this time he caught movement in the trees. Not at ground level, but up in the branches. He narrowed his eyes, watching for more movement as he took slow steps towards it. 

“Directly I to nothing change,” the voice came again, definitely from that area of the branches, but Bucky couldn’t make out  _ anything _ in the shadows

“What are you?” Bucky whispered, moving ever closer. Whatever it was was sitting in a tree closer to the entrance.

“What am I?” the voice asked, and Bucky’s eyes widened. 

There was an abrupt sound, like arrows being shot from Clint’s bow, followed immediately by startled cries of dismay. Bucky whipped around, forgetting about the voice in the trees for a moment, and found every single one of his teammates falling to the ground, studded with dozens of tiny arrows. Even the dog, who lay in a slump next to Natasha, seemed to have been hit.

“Tony!” Bucky called, fear streaking through him. He was frozen in place, though, unsure if he should move and risk triggering another barrage of arrows. “Steve!?”

“Dammit,” Sam wheezed, and Steve gurgled from his position out in the middle of the tile grid, rolling over onto his side before stilling entirely.

“Tony, Tony-” Bucky called.

“Well that…” Tony heaved, clearly struggling as he sunk to his knees, eyes on Bucky. He was closer to the tiles than he had been when Bucky had wandered after the voice and though he only had a few of the arrows sticking out of him, it seemed to be affecting him just as much.

“What’s happening?” Bucky asked quickly, voice rising. “Tony, what’s- Are you okay? Nat?”

“That didn’t work so well,” Tony finished, falling to hold himself up on his hands. He raised his head to look at Bucky, pain in his eyes, and Bucky’s heart squeezed painfully in his chest. “Time for plan B,” Tony whispered.

Then each of them disappeared, vanishing in the blink of an eye, and Bucky was alone.

“What…” Bucky said to the empty room, and watched as the six tiles that Steve had made it across before the arrows had been triggered rose up again into their original positions. The  _ ping _ sounded ominously and Bucky heard his friends landing in the hallway outside the room. Within moments they were entering the room again and Bucky was looking at them all as they shuffled to a stop near the entrance. Even the dog had been regenerated.

Bucky took one quick step towards Tony, then stopped himself.

“That was not great,” Sam said.

“You think?” Steve asked, clearly frustrated.

“Not our best,” Tony agreed. “And unfortunately not very helpful either.”

They were talking like nothing had happened. Or rather, like nothing important had happened. Like Bucky hadn’t just watched five of his closest friends just die, and not the ridiculous deaths that had been happening so far. Exploding from cake, mosquito bites, getting eaten by a hippopotamus. This had been too real, too close to what could happen out in the real world all too easily.

“It was the sixth tile that triggered the arrows,” Natasha said. “That means it needs to be six numbers long, we just didn’t get the right sequence right?”

“That makes sense,” Sam said.

“No,” Tony argued. “None of this makes sense. There has to be something here that tells us how to get across. I just don’t see anything besides  _ trees and numbers _ .”

And there was Tony’s frustration. Being unable to solve the problem at hand, especially when said problem involved numbers. But this had nothing to do with math or physics or engineering.

And Nat, Sam, and Steve were now all down to one life, so they couldn’t fuck up again. Bucky  _ couldn’t _ watch them all die again, he couldn’t watch Tony-

Tony was right, there had to be  _ something  _ here that would give them a clue.

“My head and tail both equal are.”

“That fucking voice,” Bucky groaned, rubbing at his temples. He glanced toward where he’d seen movement in the trees earlier, but he couldn’t tell if the thing was still there.

“The what?” Natasha asked.

“Bucko’s hearing voices,” Tony said. “Really creepy, talking about decapitating, etc. You know how it is.”

“What?” Sam asked, clearly confused. “That’s not- What?”

“Wait,” Tony backtracked. “What is the voice saying,  _ exactly? _ ”

“Uh,” Bucky mumbled, then glanced back at the trees as something rustled. “I don’t-”

An owl burst from the tree, buzzing their heads as it flew past them and landed on a branch across the room, closer to the number grid and on a more visible branch than before.

“My middle slender as a bee.”

The voice was clearly coming from the owl. It’s beak wasn’t moving, but somehow Bucky  _ knew _ . 

“It’s the owl,” Bucky said. “He’s the one speaking.”

“What’s it saying?” Tony asked.

“You can talk to owls?” Clint asked.

“Of course he can commune with beasts,” said the dog.

Wait,  _ what _ ?

“Wait, What?” Bucky asked, eyes narrowing on the dog. The dog sat, wagging his tail. “What did you say?”

“It is one of your talents, yes?” the dog asked.

“What is happening right now?” Sam asked.

“Whether I stand on head or heel,” the owl continued from afar.

“Twas I who showed you the door at the bazaar,” the dog said.

“Is the dog talking to you?” Tony asked.

“I thought it was the owl,” Clint said.

“Everyone please shut up!” Bucky shouted, covering his ears. They did as he asked, even the dog, and Bucky carefully pulled his hands away, holding them up to halt any further comments. The owl continued speaking, saying the same thing, Bucky was almost entirely certain, that he had before everyone had been shot with arrows. He waited until the last line, then spoke up himself.

“This is what the owl’s saying,” he said quickly. Then began repeating.

“ My head and tail both equal are. My middle slender as a bee. Whether I stand on head or heel, is quite the same to you or me. But if my head should be cut off, the matter’s true though passing strange. Directly I to nothing change. What am I?”

There was a moment of silence, then Bucky said, “That’s it.”

“It’s a riddle,” Natasha said, smiling. “Solve the riddle, should be the key.”

“I suck at riddles,” Clint announced, holding his hand up. “So I’m out.”

“The answer has to be a number,” Sam said, hand going to his chin.

“Or able to be represented numerically,” Tony added, looking out at the grid. The distance in his gaze was either him thinking through the riddle or he was smouldering again, Bucky couldn’t quite tell.

“Which numbers are symmetrical?” Sam asked, coming up to stand beside Bucky and Tony as he looked out over the grid.

“Of the ones used?” Natasha said, gesturing to the grid. “Zero is symmetrical.”

“Can’t be zero,” Tony mumbled. “Middle slender as a bee, remember?”

“Eight?” Bucky asked. “The top and bottom are sorta equal. Middle comes together all skinny, and if you flip it it looks mostly the same?”

“You think we should go with a plan that’ll  _ mostly _ not get us all killed?” Clint asked, clearly doubtful. Bucky glared at him.

“How many eights are there in the grid?” Tony asked, like he was taking Bucky’s suggestion seriously. Bucky had a sudden urge to stick his tongue out at Clint but managed to reign it in.

Natasha’s finger moved as she counted them. “Seven,” she said.

“Should be six,” Tony murmured. “Six of each number, which one is missing a sixth tile?”

“Zero,” Natasha said.

“Wait,” Steve said, speaking for the first time. He was standing a little ways away from Natasha, counting tiles just like the rest of them. “The eight on the second to last row, on the left there, that one looks different.”

Tony went over next to Steve, as did everyone else, crowding around to look at the tile Steve had indicated.

“Looks like an eight to me,” Clint said.

“No,” Tony said slowly, grin forming. “It’s not an eight. It’s a Lemniscate.”

“A what?” Clint asked.

“Infinity symbol,” Tony clarified. “Go through the riddle, it all fits. I think we found our key.”

Bucky ran through the riddle himself in his own head and had to agree. It fit. But how on earth would they get over there?

“That’s too far to jump,” Natasha said, reading Bucky’s mind. “Even for you and Clint.”

“What if we throw someone?” Sam suggested.

“What?” Bucky asked. 

“It’s on the second to last row, right?” Sam explained. “Tony throws you, you land on the Lemni-whatever, and then you can hop the remaining distance to the other side. Easy peasy.”

“I think it’s a solid plan,” Tony said, and Bucky turned a betrayed look on him. “But I think I should throw Steve.”

“What?” Steve squawked. “Why me?”

“You’re lighter, with smaller feet and more agility,” Tony said easily, shrugging. “Plus, you and Snowflake both have two lives left, Cap.”

Steve scowled, then started shedding his layers, handing them one by one to Natasha until he was down to a simple shirt and pants. Bucky watched as Tony positioned himself near the edge of the grid, back facing the tiles, and linked his hands together in front of him. He crouched a bit, testing his knees a few times, before he settled into position.

Steve backed up all the way to the entrance, threw his head back and forth like he was getting ready to spar, and set his stance like he was waiting for the signal for a race to start. Everyone else not involved in the human-throwing stood off to the side, silent.

“Ready to rock,” Tony said, grinning.

Steve breathed out slowly. “Okay.”

“No, come on, old man, say it,” Tony teased. “Ready to rock, Cap!”

Steve sighed, but his mouth quirked up a bit. “And roll,” he said, deadpan, and then took off.

Steve ran full tilt at Tony, the last few steps carefully placed so that he planted his dominant foot in Tony’s laced palms. As soon as Steve’s foot was planted, Tony moved, heaving with his whole body as he brought his arms up and back, flinging Steve over the top of his head and toward the tile.

Steve flew over the tiles, aiming for the infinity symbol, and Bucky held his breath until he landed. He stumbled only a bit, but the tile was big enough that Steve’s feet stayed within the edges. He stood carefully, and the tile sunk under his weight.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then there was an enormous clicking sound, like heavy metal locks sliding in and out of place, as the two sides of the giant door slowly, but surely opened wide to reveal a simple, clean room. Inside stood a single pedestal, a green, glowing gem sitting at its center.

“It worked,” Sam breathed.

The rest of the tiles surrounding Steve all depressed at once and the calm shattered momentarily as everyone braced for the worst. But after they all sunk, they all rose as one, clicking into place on the floor as if none had ever been stepped on at all.

“Steve!” Natasha called. “Jump over and grab the stone, then see if you can make it back while we stay here.”

She turned to everyone and ushered them back. “Stand near the door where Bucky was safe the first time, just in case.”

Everyone followed Natasha’s orders, and they watched as Steve nimbly jumped over the last row, cautiously made his way into the room and took the green stone. Nothing happened, and after a moment, Steve made his way back to the tile grid.

“You just want me to walk across?” Steve asked dubiously.

“Maybe he should slide the stone across to us before he tries?” Sam asked. “Then at least we have the stone.”

Bucky shrugged, looking at Steve. “Not a bad suggestion.”

“Alright, here it comes,” Steve said, and set the stone on the floor before flinging it with all his might. It slid smoothly and Natasha went up to grab it as it crossed the final tile on the grid, before retreating back to the entrance. 

All that planning was for naught, however, because Steve walked across the tile grid with no problems at all. None of them sunk down under his weight, and he was grinning like a loon when he finally reached them.

“Proud of yourself, aren’t’cha?” Bucky teased. 

“Just excited,” Steve corrected, though his smile was still huge. “We’ve got four out of six now.”

“But we need to be careful,” Natasha reminded them all. “We don’t know what’s next and we can’t afford to lose any more lives.”

“Verily,” the dog said. “We must be more cautious in our future endeavors or surely mine brother will have the last laugh at our expense.”

Bucky blinked as the group all turned to make their way out the door, back in the direction of the bazaar. And then it clicked.

“Wait,” Bucky said. “ _ Thor!? _ ”

The dog yipped happily and everyone stopped. 

“Of course it is I, Soldier of the Dark Months,” the dog said, sitting primly and staring at Bucky.

“Thor?” Sam echoed, looking around. “Do you… are you  _ seeing  _ things now?”

Bucky was at a loss for words, so he just pointed at the dog. Everyone stared at the dog in unison, watching as his tongue lolled out happily and his butt wiggled enthusiastically at the attention, then looked back at Bucky with doubt in their gazes.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Bucky said. “I could understand the owl, I can understand the dog. And the dog says he’s Thor.”

Natasha shrugged, not quite believing him, but Tony was looking at the dog again, thoughtful.

“Sam got bit by a mosquito and exploded,” Bucky said. “I ate cake. And  _ exploded. _ Tony is somehow the beefiest cake in the entire game, I run so slow I might as well be a sloth, and Sam is a white dude who looks like he belongs in a boy band, but  _ sure _ , let’s draw the line at ‘Thor is a dog.’ I  _ hate _ this fucking game.”

Bucky didn’t wait for a reaction, just stormed past a snickering Clint and a smirking Tony to head in the direction they had come from originally. 

This was the last time he ever played video games.


End file.
